VSL:SCIENCE // See amazing experiments in outer space

Don Pettit spent four months on the International Space Station, and more than a few hours videotaping the experiments and demonstrations he came up with in his downtime. Now NASA has collected them online.

You’ll see Pettit eating tea with chopsticks and using a CD Walkman (remember those?) as a gyroscope. But the astronaut’s best experiment involves water: First, Pettit uses a wire and a straw to build a solid, bubble-shaped sphere of the stuff — H₂O all the way through, held together by its internal molecular attraction. Then he pushes an Alka Seltzer tablet into the sphere and makes it bubble. It’s half science, half magic trick — and amazing to witness.

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