How to light a match inside a balloon - Smarter Every Day 36 LASER MONTH

So what we're gonna do for this experiment is we are going to take a balloon, a real big clear balloon, and we've got a match, and we roll the string up on the match. We're gonna start blowing the balloon up just a little bit, and we're gonna make it where we can get a straight shot, straight down into the balloon. We'll drop the match down in there and proceed to blow it up.

Alright, so you can see we have a match dangling inside of a balloon, but watch this. It's pretty cool. When I let the air out of the balloon, it kind of pushes the match out. [laugh] It's like eating the string and pushing it. It's great. Alright. Alright. We'll do it again. Except this time we'll leave it.

OK, so what we're gonna do here is we're going to try to light that match inside the balloon without popping the balloon. Well at least, until the fire pops the balloon. OK so, it's your show Johan, go for it.

(Johan) OK 3..2..1.. OK flame. Ohh there you go.

(Destin) Nice. [unintelligible] Awesome! We didn't even pop the balloon! That's it.

(Johan) Nice. Without popping the balloon.

(Destin) Check.

(Johan) I was expecting the match to pop down, like, to fall down.

(Destin) Yeah but why didn't the laser pop the balloon?

(Johan) The balloon is transparent so the light just passes through and as it doesn't absorb it, the balloon doesn't heat and it doesn't pop.

(Destin) That's it. You're getting Smarter Every Day. Have a good one. [music]

[Captions by Andrew Jackson] Captioning in different languages welcome. Please contact Destin if you can help.