Teflon Tape Secret Messages
Channel: Kids Fun Science
Date: 2020-06-06

Teflon Tape Secret Messages
Made for parents and teachers

Chapters
0:00 Kids Fun Science intro
0:08 What you need
1:10 Set up
1:47 the experiment
3:27 Science Behind it

You can find Teflon tape here
https://amzn.to/2Y8OhTR

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You probably know about Teflon® - it's that stuff used on nonstick pans to make them nonstick. But you might not know that Teflon® is also made into "Thread Seal Tape" used by plumbers.  Thread seal tape (also known as PTFE tape, Teflon tape, or plumber's tape). PTFE stands for  polytetrafluoroethylene (paa·lee·teh·truh·flaw·row·eh)
which is its scientific name. I will just refer to it’s a Teflon tape.

Teflon tape looks like regular tape and it’s not sticky at all. It is used to rap around a pipe fitting to give you a nice tight fit. It not being sticky, but it is very slippery. 

There are multiple types of Teflon tape. Here I have the white in blue case which is for water pipes and the yellow which is for gas. I recommend using the yellow tape as it was much easier to work with.

PTFE is a kind of polymer that has long chains of molecules lined up side-by-side parallel on top of each other. So that is why it is so hard to stretch.


What I find amazing about the Teflon tape is if you pull it on each end you cannot get if to stretch at all. But if you stretch it on the other ends it stretches so easy and stretches very wide and stays stretched until, you pull the other ends back and it becomes the same shape. 

It’s because it’s made out of polymer and all the strands are all parallel. 

You can find Teflon tape here
https://amzn.to/2Y8OhTR

Or you can find it in any store that sells plumbing supplies or hardware stores.

The Teflon tape is made of a polymer, which is a bunch of molecules link together to form long chains. The Teflon tape polymer chains are aligned side-by-side and parallel to each other in a lengthwise direction. This makes it difficult to stretch the Teflon tape lengthwise without breaking the tape. 

Widthwise, however, the tape stretches easily. When the polymer chains are pulled from top to bottom they slide over one another and reduce the number of chains in a section without breaking the chains themselves.

Because of this, when a message is written on the tape, then stretched widthwise, the message become unreadable. But when the tape is then stretched lengthwise, the message become readable. Hence Secret message!