Over the years, I have mastered the homemade kitchen volcano. It's the only science experiment I actually know off the top of my head, so this is the one I did with the Nuts when I decided to be their Mr. Wizard.
After 25+ years experience, here's how I do it:
1. Make the dough. You can use any dough recipe, but this is the one I use because it smells good, I have everything in my cabinet, and it's already brown.
3 C flour
1 C salt
3 Tbsp veg oil
1 1/2 C hot water
1 C cocoa powder
I just throw it all in the mixer and add a few drops of water if it looks too dry. This is the Pinenut's favorite part.
2. Mould the dough around a 16 oz bottle. I guess you could use a 2 liter, but you'd need three times the dough. That's like 9 C of flour and 3 C of cocoa. Do you know how many double chocolate cookies you could make from that?
3. Mix 1 Tbsp dish soap, 1 Tbsp baking soda and 1 Tbsp on water. Pour into volcano. The dish soap makes it bubble, not fizz. Oh! And add some red food coloring, if you have it. If not, the kids won't notice the lava the blue, or whatever color your dish soap is.
4. Pour about 1 C vinegar into the bottle. It will take a few seconds to react and bubble up, so you don't have to drop the measuring cup and run for cover. You have time. It also doesn't shoot out. It bubbles over, like most volcanoes in real life. This is supposed to be a learning experiment, not a movie prop.
But make sure your kid actually pours the vinegar into the bottle, not down the side, or you'll have a mess. That's why I always put our volcano on a baking pan.
Ah, now he got it in there! Awesome.
We did save this volcano and did a few repeat eruptions over the next few days, but remember there's still vinegar and left over solution in the bottle, so you'll have to pour faster. Also, the overwhelming stink of vinegar will eventually get you, forcing you to pitch it. In my case it was two and a half days.
No comments:
Post a Comment