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Broomstick challenge that swept across social media based on myth

Jennifer Dorozio/CBC
Jennifer Dorozio/CBC

A new viral Internet challenge has people trying to make their brooms stand on their own because of a false claim about an annual fluctuation in the Earth's gravity. The #broomstickchallenge has spread across YouTube, Twitter and TikTok and has thousands of people trying it out and being surprised by the outcome.

It all started with a tweet claiming that Feb.10 was the one day of the year when a broom can stand up on its own.

However, it's not true. A broom can stand on its own any day of the year — it just requires patience and the right broom to do the trick.

Davis Leong, daily programs supervisor at Calgary's Telus Spark, debunked the premise of the challenge in an interview with The Eyeopener on Tuesday. He said it has nothing to do with Earth's gravity. Rather, it's because brooms have a low centre of gravity.

"Every object has a balanced point, when all the forces that are acting on it are going to be even," he said. "If you find that balance point, it'll kind of stand up on its own."

Leong noted that challenges like this are so popular because it gives you a sense of accomplishment.

"It's still a challenge and this is stuff that is valuable from early childhood and trying to balance objects on each other and learning where different objects have their balance points," he said.

"Even celebrities, as we saw with the broomstick challenge, love to try to get things to balance."

As well, he said, if Earth's gravity did fluctuate like this, it would wreak "absolute havoc" on our bodies and muscles.

"We would just have a really hard time living life normally as we do," he said. "Earth's gravity stays relatively constant just like the mass of the Earth does."

Another popular myth similar to the broomstick challenge is an old wives' tail that you can balance an egg during vernal and autumnal equinoxes — March 19 and Sept. 22 this year in Calgary — because night and day are approximately equal length all over the planet.

However, this is another trick that can be done at any point in the year, but it takes the right egg to do it.

"It has nothing to do with gravity or your ability to balance," Leong said.

"You have to find an egg with a yolk that's perfectly centred in order to do it and there's no way to tell from looking outside the egg."