momstown Gift Guide 2014: DIY fun with science experiments kit

Who doesn’t love to make things explode in the kitchen? My kids will make a mess no matter what, so I figure I might as well promote some learning while they destroy my house.

I put together a kit for each of my kids, filling a basket with all the ingredients they would need for these experiments. All supplies are from the dollar store or Wal-Mart.

In addition, this gift will help them with:
reading
following instructions
measuring
understanding science: All the experiments have explanations.

I chose experiments that seemed appropriate for their ages and learning abilities.  I also tried to choose experiments that would interest them.

Here we go!

1. SLIME
What you need

• Elmer's white glue or Elmer's school glue gel
• Water
• Food colouring (optional)
• Glitter
• Borax
• Two bowls

Instructions

1. In one bowl, mix ½ cup (125 ml) glue and ½ cup water. Add food colouring if you want coloured slime.  Add glitter.
2. In the other bowl, mix 1 tsp. borax with 1 cup water until the borax is dissolved.
3. Slowly stir the glue mixture into the borax solution.
4. The slime will begin to form immediately; stir as much as you can, then dig in and knead it with your hands until it gets less sticky. (No one makes slime without getting a little messy!) Don't worry about any leftover water in the bowl; just pour it out.

What Happened
The glue contains a liquid polymer called polyvinyl acetate. The borax links its molecules to each other, creating one large, flexible polymer. This kind of slime will get stiffer and more like putty the more you play with it.
Reference:  http://www.hometrainingtools.com/a/slime-recipes-project

2. BALLOON FIZZ INFLATOR

What you need

• One small empty plastic soda or water bottle
• ½ cup vinegar
• Small balloon
• Baking soda
• Funnel

Instructions

1. Carefully pour the vinegar into the bottle.
2. This is the tricky part: Loosen up the balloon by stretching it a few times and then use the funnel to fill it a bit more than half way with baking soda. If you don't have a funnel you can make one using paper and some tape.
3. Carefully put the neck of the balloon all the way over the neck of the bottle without letting any baking soda into the bottle.
4. Ready? Lift the balloon up so that the baking soda falls from the balloon into the bottle and mixes with the vinegar. Watch the fizz-inflator at work!

What Happened

The baking soda and the vinegar create an acid-base reaction and the two chemicals work together to create carbon dioxide gas. Gases need a lot of room to spread out and the carbon dioxide starts to fill the bottle, then moves into the balloon, inflating it.
Learning and things to think about

1. Does water temperature affect how fast the balloon fills up?
2. Does the size of the bottle affect how much the balloon fills?
3. Can the amount the balloon fills up be controlled by the amount of vinegar or baking soda?

Reference:  http://www.sciencebob.com/experiments/fizzinflator.php

3. EXPLODING BAG

What you need

• paper towel
• measuring spoon
• baking soda
• vinegar
• water
• measuring cup
• resealable plastic sandwich bags

Instructions

1. Figure out where you want to explode your Bubble Bomb. Sometimes the bags make a mess when they pop, so you may want to experiment outside. If it's a rainy day, you can explode your Bubble Bombs in the bathtub or sink.
2. Tear a paper towel into a square, roughly 5”x 5”. Put 1½ tbsp of baking soda in the center of the square, then fold the square with the baking soda inside. This is your “time-release packet.”
3. Pour into your plastic bag: 1/2 cup of vinegar 1/4 cup of warm water
4. Here's the tricky part: You need to drop the time-release packet into the vinegar and zip the bag closed before the fizzing gets out of control.
5. Shake the bag a little, put it in the sink or on the ground, and stand back! The bag will puff up dramatically and pop with a bang.

What Happened
The bubbles in the Bubble Bomb are filled with carbon dioxide, a gas that forms when the vinegar (an acid) reacts with the baking soda (a base).
Things to think About

1. Try using a different size of zipper-lock plastic bag. What do you think might happen? Do you think you'll need to use more baking soda, vinegar, and water to make the bag explode? Try it and see.
2. In the original experiment, we asked you to use warm water. Try using cold water or hot water. Does changing the temperature change your results? How?
3. The first time you tried this, you mixed the vinegar with water. Try doing the experiment again with just vinegar. How did this change your experiment?
4. Instead of using paper towel, make your "time release packet" using a different kind of paper, like toilet paper, tissue paper or notebook paper. What happened?

Reference:  https://www.exploratorium.edu/science_explorer/bubblebomb.html

4. DIET COKE GEYSER
What you need

• 2L bottle of Diet Coke
• 1 pack of Mentos
• 1 piece of construction paper

Instructions

1. Carefully open the bottle of pop. Position it on the ground so it will not tip over.
2. Unwrap the whole roll of Mentos. The goal is to drop all the Mentos into the bottle at once, which is trickier than it sounds. (You’ll use your construction paper to create a tube.) DON’T DROP THEM IN YET!
3. Warn spectators to stand back. Now quickly drop all the Mentos into the bottle at once and MOVE BACK!

What Happened

As you probably know, pop is basically sugar (or diet sweetener), flavouring, water and preservatives. The thing that makes soda bubbly is invisible carbon dioxide gas, which is pumped into bottles at the bottling factory using tons of pressure. Until you open the bottle and pour a glass of soda, the gas mostly stays suspended in the liquid and cannot expand to form more bubbles, which gases naturally do. If you shake the bottle, then open it, the gas is released from the protective hold of the water molecules and escapes with a whoosh, taking some of the soda along with it.

What other ways can you cause the gas to escape? Just drop something into a glass of soda and notice how bubbles immediately form on the surface of the object. For example, adding salt to soda causes it to foam up because thousands of little bubbles form on the surface of each grain of salt. Many scientists, including Lee Marek, say the Mentos phenomenon is a physical reaction, not a chemical one.

Water molecules strongly attract each other, linking together to form a tight mesh around each bubble of carbon dioxide gas in the soda. In order to form a new bubble, or even to expand a bubble that has already formed, water molecules must push away from each other. It takes extra energy to break this surface tension. In other words, water resists the expansion of bubbles in the soda. When you drop the Mentos into the soda, the gelatin and gum arabic from the dissolving candy break the surface tension. This disrupts the water mesh, so that it takes less work to expand and form new bubbles.

Each Mentos candy has thousands of tiny pits all over the surface. These tiny pits are called nucleation sites – perfect places for carbon dioxide bubbles to form. As soon as the Mentos hit the soda, bubbles form all over the surface of the candy. Combine this with the fact that Mentos are heavy and sink to the bottom of the bottle and you've got a double whammy. When all this gas is released, it literally pushes the liquid up and out of the bottle in an incredible soda blast.

Reference: http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/lab/experiments/original-mentos-diet-coke-geyser

5. MINI HOVERCRAFT

What You Need

• Plastic cap from a sport bottle
• Super glue
• CD/ Styrofoam plate or plastic lid (margarine)
• Balloons

Instructions

1. Take off and discard the protective cover and close the pop-top. Then, glue the bottom of the plastic water cap over the hole in the CD. Wait for the glue to dry.
2. Blow up the balloon, and twist the end around your finger to prevent air from escaping.
3. Attach the balloon's opening over the top of the bottle cap. Make sure the cap is pushed down, creating an airtight seal with the balloon.
4. Place the CD on a flat surface and pull open the pop-top on the bottle cap. The air cushion from the balloon will allow the CD to hover and glide around.
5. Once the balloon deflates, remove it from the bottle cap and blow it up again for another run. Experiment with different-size balloons, and try your hovercraft on various surfaces, including a still body of water.

Reference:  http://www.howcast.com/videos/181515-How-to-Build-a-Mini-Hovercraft

6. ART IN A JAR
What You Need

• Clear glass jar
• Water
• Oil
• Food Colouring
• Fork

Instructions

1. Fill your jar three-quarters of the way with warm water.
2. In a separate bowl, mix 3-4 tablespoons of oil and several drops of different colours of food colouring (I used 4 drops of each color:  red, yellow, blue, and green).
3. Use a fork to gently mix the oil and food colouring together.
4. Gently pour the oil mixture into the jar.
5. Watch what happens—the food colouring will slowly sink out of the oil and into the water.  When this happens, it will expand and begin to mix with the other colours.

What Happened
Food coloring dissolves in water but not in oil.   Because the oil is less dense than the water, it will float at the top.  The colored droplets will begin to sink because they are heavier than the oil.  Once they sink into the water, they will begin dissolving into the water (which looks like a tiny explosion).

Reference: http://www.icanteachmychild.com/fireworks-in-a-jar/

7. MYSTERY MATTER
What You Need

• 1 cup cornstarch
• bowl
• ABOUT ½ cup water
• spoon
• food colouring

Instructions

1. Empty the cornstarch into a large bowl.
2. SLOWLY stir in the water – you need the consistency of thick pancake batter, so don't use it all if you don't need to. It's better to add too little water than too much.
3. Add a few drops of food colouring.
4. Continue to mix. Now have some fun with what you created!

What Happened
When we talk about states of matter, we usually talk about the three types: solid (like a rock), liquid (like water) and gas (like the air we breath).
A mixture of cornstarch and water make what is known as a suspension. When you squeeze a Cornstarch Suspension it really feels like a solid because its molecules line up. But it looks like a liquid and acts like a liquid when no one is pressing on it because the molecules relax. This is another state of matter, called a suspension (It can act like a liquid, or, when pressed like a solid.).

8. LAVA LAMP

What You Need

• Water
• A clear plastic bottle
• Vegetable oil
• Food colouring
• Alka-Seltzer (or other tablets that fizz)

Instructions

1. Pour water into the plastic bottle until it is around a quarter full (you might want to use a funnel).
2. Pour in vegetable oil until the bottle is nearly full.
3. Wait until the oil and water have separated.
4. Add around a dozen drops of food colouring to the bottle (any colour you like).
5. Watch as the food colouring falls through the oil and mixes with the water.
6. Cut an Alka-Seltzer tablet into five or six smaller pieces (around 5 or 6) and drop one into the bottle. Things should start getting a little crazy, just like a real lava lamp!
7. When the bubbling stops, add another piece of the tablet and enjoy the show!

What's happening
The oil and water you added to the bottle separate from each other, with oil on top because it has a lower density than water. The food colouring falls through the oil and mixes with the water at the bottom. The piece of Alka-Seltzer tablet you drop in after releases small bubbles of carbon dioxide gas that rise to the top and take some of the coloured water along for the ride. The gas escapes when it reaches the top and the colored water falls back down. The reason Alka-Seltzer fizzes in such a way is because it contains citric acid and baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), the two react with water to form sodium citrate and carbon dioxide gas (those are the bubbles that carry the coloured water to the top of the bottle).
Reference:  http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/experiments/easylavalamp.html

9. BOUNCY EGG
What You Need

• Boiled egg
• Glass jar
• White Vinegar

Instructions

1. Place the boiled egg inside the glass jar and pour white vinegar over it until the egg is fully immersed.
2. Close the jar tightly.
3. Set it aside and away from direct sunlight for a full day and observe what happens to the egg. Leave it for another week before you drain the egg from the vinegar. Rinse the egg in tap water and dry it.

What Happened
What did you observe when you placed the egg into a jar of vinegar? What did you see after leaving it for one whole day?
If you noticed small bubbles forming around the egg, that is completely normal. After some time you will notice that the bubbles grow bigger and eventually rise to the surface of the white vinegar. After some time, the egg will start to float due to the bubbles that have gathered around it. The shell of the egg then starts to decompose because of the vinegar. After a week has passed, notice that the eggshell has decomposed completely. Once you take it out, feel the texture of the egg. It feels leathery doesn't it? Now, what's even more exciting is that it will bounce if you try to bounce it against the floor. Try it!
Now what is the explanation behind this? The Magic Egg experiment actually demonstrates the process of osmosis. Osmosis is the movement of liquid from a solution of lower concentration to a more concentrated solution through a semi-permeable substance. Permeable means fluids or gases are able to pass through the material. In the Magic Egg experiment, the vinegar slowly diffuses through the eggshell until it dissolves it completely, leaving the egg rubbery or leathery in texture.
So what is in the vinegar that gives it the ability to dissolve the eggshell? Vinegar is an acid. Specifically, it is a dilute form of acetic acid, which reacts with calcium — the primary component of eggshell. As the eggshell breaks down, carbon dioxide is produced, which appears in the form of bubbles. Leaving the egg immersed in the vinegar will cause its shell to dissolve completely.

Reference: https://explorable.com/magic-egg-experiment

10. MARSHMALLOW CHALLENGE: CAN YOU SINK A MARSHMALLOW?

What You Need

• Glass
• Water
• Mini-marshmallows

Instructions
When you drop a marshmallow in water, it floats like a balloon.  A marshmallow is full of air bubbles, which puff it out.  The sugar in the marshmallow gets spread out over a large area, making the marshmallow less dense than water.  So how do you make a marshmallow denser?  You have to make it smaller.
To try the marshmallow challenge, take a mini marshmallow and squash it.  You can do this by smashing it between your palms, rolling it between your fingers, or smashing it against a flat surface.  Try to roll it into a ball rather than flatten it into a pancake, because a pancake shape floats better than a ball.
When your marshmallow is as small as you can make it, drop it in water.  Does it sink?  If it does, you’ve made it denser than water.  You beat the marshmallow challenge!

Reference: http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/blog/guest-contributor/density-in-action-can-you-sink-a-marshmallow/