At the twins’ elementary school, one parent decided to create an after-school Science Club. It’s fantastic and the kids are having a great time experimenting with all kinds of different things. This month’s project? Volcanoes!
They each received a chicken-wire frame that they added strips of fast-drying plaster to flesh out the “mountain.” Then they painted it and brought it home, along with the ingredients (baking soda and vinegar) to blow it up.
E put all her baking soda in the inner core and dumped all the vinegar in at once. It bubbled over quickly in a flash-eruption. It didn’t really look like lava, but it had a lot of pizzazz.
C put in about half of his baking soda…
and slowly added in the vinegar (dyed red with food coloring for that additional flair!).
This time, it foamed up slowly and oozed down the sides.
There are lots of resources on how to make your own volcano (including here and a lavender one here!). For more instant gratification, you could skip the mountain-making and use a clean, old bottle or jar and experiment with different amounts of baking soda and vinegar to see what type of explosions you get. Or you could always go the Mentos-in-Diet-Coke route.
Do you remember doing this as a kid? I do. It must have been a school project, but I remember “exploding” it in the backyard and thinking it was the coolest thing around. Still do, as a matter of fact.
If you are feeling old, tired, jaded or worn out from all the worries of the world, may I recommend setting off a baking-soda-and-vinegar reaction of your own? As much as I enjoyed it as a child, an exploding volcano is way more fun as an adult with a couple of 8-year-olds giggling and screaming “Blow it up again!”
Trust me on this one.