“A stinging orange” experiment

How to burst a balloon using orange

Did you know that you can burst a bal­loon with an or­ange? In this ex­per­i­ment you’ll see that an or­ange can be a de­li­cious weapon!

Safe­ty pre­cau­tions

Ob­serve safe­ty rules when work­ing with fire.

Reagents and equip­ment:

  • or­ange;
  • knife;
  • spir­it burn­er;
  • bal­loon.

Step-by-step in­struc­tions

Take an or­ange and cut off a piece of peel. Squeeze the juice from the or­ange peel at the flame of the burn­er. The flame seems to spark!

Take a bal­loon. If you “shoot” juice at the bal­loon, it bursts!

Pro­cess­es de­scrip­tion

If you squeeze or­ange peel hard, juice shoots out of it that con­tains high­ly flammable es­sen­tial oils. When they are di­rect­ed at flame, the drops of liq­uid cre­ate beau­ti­ful flash­es of flame in the air.

One of the com­po­nents of es­sen­tial oil is limonene, con­tained in or­ange peel in high con­cen­tra­tion. It ac­tive­ly dis­solves rub­ber. If we spray our liq­uid at a bal­loon, it will burst, as the thin lay­er of rub­ber that it is made from dis­solves.

You can re­peat the ex­per­i­ment with oth­er cit­rus fruits (man­darins, grape­fruit, lemons), as their peel is also rich in es­sen­tial oils.

Try it