If you want to make a childs eyes light up… suggest you're going to be playing with things that explode. (if only a little) Originally I was going to suggest that it's a good way to make a 9 year olds eyes light up, but every age child loves a little innocent boom now and then.
This weeks science experiment was greatly assisted by my friend Sara, over at the Kitchen of Tasty Chaos. She works a lot with children and suggested that something that involves tiny explosions might be a lot of fun. She was VERY right.
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- This is my “Team of Science!” (Bill Nye Reference… it’s before your time)
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- This is pretty much how every single lab group went in college Chemistry.
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- Here they have the water, the alka-setlzer, the film canister, and a theory or two on how it works.
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- They put the materials all together like seasoned champions… their initial thought was that if the recipe calls for one capsule and half a container of water, they should use two, and fill the film canister to the top.
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- What happened was that the bubbles almost immediately overwhelmed them, getting the lids on was tough as the foam bubbled over the end, but the results were fantastic, it only took them five minutes to find the film canister covers!
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- I love the look on his face in this picture, you can tell he was having an “Awesome Time… of Science!”
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- After overfilling and over pilling the canisters the kids tried the opposite extreme, breaking the pills in half and putting in only half as much water. Their theory “It’ll still work.”
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- Like the cat that stole the canary, the kids smile as they’re about to do the final phase of the experiment, half a capsule should still work, with just a little bit of water. It did still work… in most cases, one had too little seal on the top, but as we went along I explained why each experiment worked better or worse than the last one.
Overall, it was a blazing success, we did work on making sure we kind of stuck with the scientific method, and they learned a lot. I like that I was able to ask ways that they think they could alter the results of the experiment and they were able to offer all kinds of ideas. I regret I didn't have any soda on hand because they wanted to try that too. I made a small video of the last experiment. As you can see, his enthusiasm and surprise were a little more moderated by this point, but it still gave me a grin.