Hooked on Science: Newton's tablecloth trick

Here's an experiment you can try at the Thanksgiving Day dinner table.

Materials

• Several heavy dishes
• Tablecloth without a hem
• Square table with an edge

Instructions

STEP 1: Place the tablecloth on the table and then arrange the glass dishes on the tablecloth.

STEP 2: Grab the edges of the tablecloth, quickly pull down toward the floor and observe.

Explanation

The dishes stay on the table as you quickly remove the tablecloth. This happens because of inertia. Inertia is the tendency of an object to resist change. The dishes resist the change taking place underneath them and remain in place. The heavier an object is, the more inertia it has. This is the reason why plastic or paper dishes will not work for this experiment; they do not have enough inertia and will not resist the change taking place underneath them.

Jason Lindsey is a science outreach educator with Hooked on Science. Check out his website hookedonscience.org for webcasts and experiments.