While many social media challenges are sure to cause you some damage – for example, please don’t try the penny challenge – they’re not often as confusing and supernatural as this one.
Yesterday, the standing broom challenge swept TikTok, prompted by an alleged viral tweet by NASA.
One Twitter user said yesterday: ‘Okay so NASA said today was the only day a broom can stand up on its own because of the gravitational pull…I didn’t believe it at first but OMG!’
The video they then posted showed a video of a broom standing up on its own, purportedly due to the pull on the moon or something else to do with science.
What followed was many more similar posts from people shocked that this worked, and even going out to hardware stores to test the brooms.
Okay so NASA said today was the only day a broom can stand up on its own because of the gravitational pull…I didn’t believe it at first but OMG! ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ pic.twitter.com/M0HCeemyGt
— mk (@mikaiylaaaaa) February 10, 2020
Some theorised that it was something to do with the February full moon, which also happened to be a supermoon. Others said it was an equinox (although this doesn’t happen until March 20).
Even if it yesterday had fallen on either of these events, we can report that it would have made no bearing on whether a broom can stand up unaided.
It is technically to do with gravity why the brooms can stand up, but it isn’t specific to any day or event.
In fact, it’s simply to do with the fact that a broom’s centre of gravity is low to the ground due to the way the bristles make a sort of triangle.
As long as this triangle is created when you put the broom up, it should stand up by itself no matter what.
It’s actually a very common myth, and it’s also been popularised that an equinox can result in eggs being able to stand up on their bottoms on this day.
The ever-informative Snopes debunked it way back in 1999, saying ‘the feat works best with newer brooms which have uniform, evenly cut bristles, with the angle of the bristle cut offsetting the lean angle of the broom.’
Once again, don’t believe everything you see online. Unless it comes from Snopes.
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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/11/standing-broom-challenge-space-12219646/
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