Friday, July 17, 2009

“Exploding” Paint

Waiting to Explode

You thought I’d end the baking soda and vinegar business with the volcanoes, didn’t you?  At alumni camp this year we did exploding paint.  The concept is a little cooler than the execution, but it was fun to experiment anyway.

We put some baking soda and paint in snack-sized sandwich bags and then used a funnel to pour in a little vinegar.  Zip it up quickly and then toss it.  At some point, it all bubbles out.  If you throw the bag with some force you get a slightly more exciting event.  We threw the bags onto white paper on a sidewalk so we could see what it looked like later.

We got this idea from one of our early experience education students.  I’m not sure she had actually done it, now that I have.  We did have lots and lots of colored bubbles, so it was fun that way.  But I can’t really say that anything truly exploded.

We also attempted this with Alka-Seltzer and soda water, but the results were about the same.

Need a refresher on the chemical reaction itself?  Baking soda + vinegar = water + carbon dioxide + sodium acetate (more or less).

No comments:

Post a Comment