Year 11 students are learning about pressure for Mechanics.

To demonstrate the effect of higher vs lower pressure, students were asked to inflate a balloon and push it hard on a bed of nails. No matter how hard they pushed the balloon did not pop. When they pushed a single nail into the same balloon, the balloon popped very quickly. The main difference was the surface area of nails the balloon was pushed into. More area means less pressure, so there is significantly less pressure on the balloon when pushed onto the bed of nails compared to pushed into a single nail, and the more the pressure, the easier it is to pop the balloon.