Today we did the Mentos candy plus Diet Coke
explosion experiment AGAIN!!! The kids just LOVE doing it.
This time we used a plastic test tube to hold the Mentos above the
Diet Coke so that they just fell into the container smoothly and it
worked so much better than just trying to pop them in a quickly as
you can. This way makes a much bigger geyser.
Ethan and his dad designed a blow gun out of pvc pipe and golf
tees. The made a small cone of paper to go around the tee at
the head then inserted it into the pipe and then Ethan blew it out.
With a strong enough breath, he was able to penetrate a shoe box.
He thought this was totally cool!!!
Vacuuming Marshmallows
I saw a
neat
experiment toy in the Steve Spangler catalog and thought I could do
the same experiment with the wine vacuum pump I already have. You
could also use a soda Fizz-Keeper.
we put small marshmallows in a glass jar and put a wine vacuum cork in the top
we attached the manual pump
and pumped the air out of the jar
as the air is pumped out, the marshmallows appear to grow
when the seal is broken and air comes rushing in the jar, the marshmallows are crumpled
This experiment shows how much oxygen is in the air and how areas
of low pressure and high pressure react. Fill a shallow dish
with about an inch or two of water. Place a small tea light
candle in the dish. It will float. Light the candle and
let it burn well then place a small glass container or drinking
glass over the candle upside down. The candle will burn for a
short while and then extinguish once it uses up the supply of
oxygen. At the same time, because the oxygen content of the
glass has been used, an area of low pressure will result. The
outer air, pressing down upon the surface of the water in the dish
in it s endeavor to enter, will instead, force water up into the
glass, thus indicating the amount of oxygen which was used.
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