Can Neil deGrasse Tyson move a Doughsteroid?

I watched the video of Neil’s talk with a 9yo in which Neil says that it may be hard to push some asteroids to move them because they could be made of a dough-like substance. He said if you tried to push it with something smaller than the Doughsteroid itself, then the pushing thing would simply push inside the Doughsteroid without moving the Doughsteroid. My dad asked me if I believed Neil. We wanted to test this for ourselves so I used a BB gun to shoot a Rocksteroid, a PlayDohsteroid, and a ShavingCreamsteroid.  The BBs moved all of them.  The videos of my experiments are below.

The conclusion is that Doughsteroids can be moved by things pushing on them.  Neil’s example has been disproved by me.

The full video of Neil’s talk with the 9yo is here:

www DOT youtube DOT com/watch?v=jB-11B9PtBM

2 thoughts on “Can Neil deGrasse Tyson move a Doughsteroid?

  1. I really like the whipped/shaving cream version. It barely moves at all in response to the BB blasts. The two videos make a really nice contrast.

    1. Thank you Ms. Kirsten for replying to the post and reading this blog. I really appreciate it. The shaving cream version was the most fun because we had to do it multiple times to get it right so it posed more of a challenge. — Alex

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