Fizzy Science

Today I did *not* get to sleep in. I still decided to make great effort not to be grumpy about it... once I had coffee and a banana muffin, that is. Yesterday's fun activities inspired me to continue my list of fun things to do with the lad as it is another late work day for my husband so I might as well make it fun for both of us, right? I mean, if he had siblings to play with I would honestly probably be significantly less hands on with this kind of thing. But he doesn't (yet) so instead of being begged to play cars for hours on end, this is how I would rather roll. And I admit, I do really enjoy these kinds of things.

Anyways, yesterday had more of a math/numbers focus so today we went with science. Fizzy Science to be exact. Before we got started I looked up why vinegar and baking soda react the way they do, then I explained it to my son as if I had known all along. I kinda doubt he grasped the dual reaction thing, but you know, it's all about exposure, right?

Our first two experiments were done one right after the other, not only to see how the two ingredients responded to being combined, but also to contrast the difference between adding the vinegar to the baking soda and then vice versa. He was pretty excited to get started.

Both were a lot of fun and *super* easy. He especially loved the color mixing part of the prep. Adding the colored vinegar to the baking soda was more of an art project for him. It fizzed enough to be fun but he really liked the color aspect of it. However, the second part, where we added the baking soda to the colored vinegar really got him. He expected less of a reaction and got really excited when it started overflowing over the muffin cup. Even after both projects were done he had fun moved the different colors to different cups and making it fizz as long as it could. This is something we will definitely do again. Great rainy day project. Or a great take it outside on a nice day project.

A couple of hours after those, we did one last "fizzy science" experiment. I got this idea and directions from here. Read the order of doing it at that site, but basically you use these items:

Take it outside and put them in the bag in the right order, then watch it explode.

okay, so ours was a bit of a bust. It looked like there were two tiny holes in the bag so the pressure didn't build up like I had expected. And then, in his true style, my son didn't have much of an immediate reaction. He likes to think about things before really showing what he thinks... oy

All in all they were all three fun and educational and something I hope to do again. Especially with an un-holy bag.

PS Sorry about the video being sideways and poorly recorded! No idea how to fix that....