what's going on? Your Magic Flower is powered by a groovy scientific phenomenon called 'capillary action'. Thanks to capillary action, paper absorbs water very rapidly. When paper gets wet, it swells which causes the folded petals of your Magic Flower to open up.



As the name suggests, capillary action happens inside capillaries and it takes a little explaining. The capillaries in your body are the minute blood vessels between the end of your arteries and the beginning of your veins. But 'capillary' can also mean a tiny tube, like a straw with a teeny-weeny tiny bore. Straws with very narrow bores are absolutely useless for drinking milk shakes but superb for studying capillary action.



Now you might have noticed that the water level inside a straw is slightly higher than the water level outside. The water surface also curves up the sides of your drinking glass a tiny bit. This is all because water is slightly more attracted to glass and plastic than it is to itself.



This upward creeping makes the water surface curve downwards slightly from the edges of a glass container or straw and this shape is called a negative meniscus (meniscus means crescent shapes). Mercury is slightly less attracted to glass than it is to itself so it does the opposite and bulges upwards in a glass creating a positive meniscus. Mercury is very poisonous though, so you should never, ever play with it!



Now heres the interesting thing. If you place a whole bunch of glass straws, each with a slightly narrower bore in water, you discover that the narrower the bore, the higher the water level inside creeps up. This is capillary action! Putting glass straws with tiny bores in water is a classic first year physics experiment at university. I can still remember marvelling at the colourful anti-gravity water inside little glass straws just like the ones in this photo in my first year at QUT. Its amazing!





So what does all this have to do with your Magic Flower? Well, if you put paper under a microscope, youll notice it is not a solid, impenetrable substance. Paper is made of tiny wood fibres which are tightly interwoven providing amazing strength and a beautiful writing surface. Even in high quality photocopier paper, there are billions of tiny little gaps between the fibres (paper towel is made to be especially airy).



When paper comes into contact with water, the amazing power of capillary action rapidly draws water into all these tiny spaces. Its because the water is slightly more attracted to the wood fibres than to itself. This helps trees and plants to lift water from their roots up to their leaves. The Sun provides the extra bit of lift required by evaporating water from tiny holes in the leaves called stomata. This process is called transpiration and we wouldnt be here without it.



But back to your Magic Flower. When the paper absorbs water (which it does so well thanks to capillary action) it swells. Thats why paper goes wrinkly when it gets wet but it also causes any folds to open back up again. If you folded each neighbouring petal over sequentially, your flower will open very differently than if you folded each opposite pair. Try experimenting with the order and youll see what I mean.



But the best thing about Magic Flowers is that they simply make you smile. Whether its someone you fancy or someone whos not feeling too crash hot, a Magic Flower is guaranteed to brighten up their day. top