Monday, November 12, 2007

Alka Seltzer


We had a wonderful day today! Most everything went smoothly and we had a lot of laughs along the way, too. We didn't get to everything, but we did get a lot done.

I decided to have some fun with science today. I had come across a Alka Seltzer's website a few weeks ago while looking for a chemistry experiment. So, today we experimented (aka "played") with Alka Seltzer. I actually started this lesson by having Alexandra watch this video.


We talked about how chemical reactions can be sped up by adding heat or by increasing the surface area of the two chemicals reacting. So, we tested cold vs. hot water and a whole Alka Seltzer tab versus a broken up one.


Then, we decided to try lemon juice and vinegar. We just had fun mixing different amounts of ingredients and seeing how quickly they exploded the lid off of our film canister. We really got excited when the lid flew high or made the whole canister flip. We had a wonderful time! Science is fun. :-)


Unfortunately, even after downloading for 30+ minutes, I somehow only got part of my daughter's video. I'll try again tomorrow...

4 comments:

live4evermom said...

Oh, we did this last year when we did Apologia Astronomy. We were doing rockets and yes my boys loved it. They did the same thing. But we didn't try hot and cold water. They used up the whole box of Alka Seltzer. This was lots of fun. You brought back great memories. My boys have actually been asking for more film canisters.

Anonymous said...

I never thought of going to Alka Seltzer's website. Great idea for science. To answer your question, my son hunted in our yard for the mantis for almost a week. We used the butterfly habitat that we had previously used for raising butterflies. We did buy those. We plan to buy a mantis egg sack this spring. We will need a better habitat as the crickets kind of ruined this one, plus they ate the egg case that our mantis laid. I highly recommend the project.
Jenn
www.homeschoolblogger.com/happycamper

Sherri said...

We've had a lot of fun with that stuff, but have never been to the site. I will be going there and having a look around!!

Robin said...

That looks so cool! I've been meaning to get to that experiment. I'm thinking that next week is going to be very Science heavy for us. So I may include this experiment then. Thanks for reminding me about it.
Did the canister give you a big pop? I mean, it didn't pop into her face at all, did it?

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