Spring Break is a great time of the year. The kiddos are ready for a break from school and the weather often permits them to get outside and have some fun. But do your kids want to just watch the tv or play video games? This drives me crazy. My son LOVES his Wii but we have to regulate his time or he would play it forever. Sometimes (even with the hundreds of toys that we have) he says, “I’m bored.” So I have to stimulate his creative thinking with a high interest activity. The activity below worked for all of my children. They got so excited they wanted to do many tests to see which one worked the best and produced the biggest ‘pop’.
Volcanos and Chemistry:
Chemical reactions are fun. It’s like a bit of science magic. This experiment uses household items from your kitchen to create a safe non-toxic reaction.
Our Test Bags: Baking Soda Tablets and Vinegar=”POP!”
Here’s what you will need:
- Baking Soda Tablets (alaseltzer or generic): Sodium Bicarbonate – 4 Tablets
- White Vinegar
- Water
- Ziplock Bag
Directions:
- Open the Sodium Bicarbonate Tablets and stack them.
- Open the ziplock bag and pour in about 1″ of vinegar.
- Carefully pinch the tablets inside the bag near the top, but do not allow them to fall into the vinegar.
- Zip the bag closed ( you will need a partner to help you ) but do not drop the tablets into the vinegar
- Drop the tablets and shake the bag 4-5 times fast. Then put the bag down and move back at least 5 feet.
- The bag will fill up with gas and pop when it can no longer hold the gas that the sodium bicarbonate and the vinegar create.
What Happened?
Vinegar has acetic acid and its chemical formula is CH3COOH. Sodium Bicarbonate or Baking Soda’s chemical formula is NaHCO3. The reaction between the two compounds looks like this CH3COOH + NaHCO3 -> H2O + NaOCOCH3 + CO2. Everything past the arrow is what is left after the reaction. If you wait until your bag is completely liquid and no more bubbles are produced you can sniff your results. (Pour the remaining solution into a cup and smell it.) It should smell like salty water. H2O is water. NaOCOCH3 is a salt known as sodium acetate. CO2 is carbon dioxide that is the gas you saw fill the bag and the bubbles you saw forming.
How does this relate to volcanoes?
Volcanoes are mountains or hills that are typically cone shaped that have a vent in the earth’s crust through which lava, steam, and ashes are expelled. The pressure builds up below the earth’s surface. When the pressure gets very high the hot melted rock called magma travels up through the conduit (or pipe) and breaks the surface of the volcano often filled with rock and/or water. The great explosion releases the magma which flows down the side of the volcano mountain. As the magma cools down it turns back into solid rock.
Your bag filled up with pressure from the chemical reaction of the baking soda tablet and vinegar and eventually ‘popped’ like the volcano explodes from the pressure of the hot magma. Pretty cool, huh?
Want a few books to read to go along with your Volcano activity?
Come back soon to see my next spring break activity!