November 21st before noon
9am
Believe it or not the Science Shack team and the Bedford student volunteers are still sticking bits of paper together to make the hot air balloon which they hope will lift Adam off the ground. They are battling the damp air - which is making the paper soggy, inexperience at sticking techniques, and above all time. Challenge Anneka was never this tense - this HAS to be finished by the end of the day or we are all out of a JOB.

11am
Adam leaves the Science Shack team with their sticky-back paper and explains to camera some of the facts about making large flying objects. He gets carried away again, making paper darts and 'planes.

Reminiscing about his misspent youth, he appears to be transported back into the mists of time as, childlike, he loudly informs all around him how inordinately proud he is of his paper dart designs.

11.15am
Adam shows that the bigger the plane the more floppy the wings making it less able to fly well. Amazingly this ultra floppy model manages to fly extremely well - much to the disappointment of the surrounding scientists.

Science Shack team member 'Wicked' Damien elegantly mixes his secret soap bubble mixture to help Adam carry out some 'don't do this at home' experiments explaining some facts about balloon flight.

12pm
Adam has a hand held device with taps for hydrogen and oxygen on them. When he blows an oxygen bubble it falls off the end of his specially adapted tube. Proving without a shadow of a doubt that oxygen is not going to help Adam's balloon get airborne.

12.45pm
Adam now blows hydrogen into the soap bubble mixture and bubbles wizz upwards as soon as they are formed. All very sweet and lovely. But hydrogen is not the best gas to use for flying…

Adam's hydrogen bubbles burst into flame as they rise and pass through the gas burner's flame. The infamous German Hindenberg airship met its end in 1937 because it was hydrogen filled and caught fire. So we won't be filling Adam's balloon with hydrogen.

We could fill it with helium but it is rather expensive! Helium is a very common gas in nature - but difficult to synthesise. When airships were first made in the 1920s helium could only be found in American natural gas - and the Americans kept strict control on world supplies. Today we get a lot of helium from the Czech Republic

1pm
Because this is Science Shack, and we have the technology, Damien is given leave to find out the explosive (actually implosive) qualities of a mix of hydrogen and oxygen. He lets a little oxygen into a soap bubble, then some hydrogen. Anticipating a big bang he doesn't dare put his bubble near enough to the flame.

Damien's mixed gas bubble hits the flame and goes GNAB!!! very loudly (it implodes as air rushes into the bubble and ignites).

Damien checks he still has his hard hat after the explosion - which Director Paul Bader explains was a perfectly safe experiment because it is an implosion rather than an explosion. Much as we trust his every word and respect his greater knowledge of science, we will also make sure Adam's balloon doesn't include this mix.

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