Baking soda

Snow Reaction in A Bag Science Experiment

Who knew that putting snow in a bag could make for a fun science experiment and give such a snow reaction. This is a great winter only kind of activity you definitely should try this winter.

Snow Reaction in A Bag Science Experiment

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Looking for something to do on a really cold day? How about grabbing a Ziploc bag and some snow for a science experiment. It really simple. All you need is a Ziploc bag, some snow, and an alka seltzer or two. If you bought some to make the lava lamps then you probably still have some on hand.

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What you need:

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How to Create a Reaction in a Bag of Snow

Now if you are like me, you don’t want to go outside in the freezing -42C windchill, even if it is just to fill a bag with some snow. That’s why we have kids though right? To make them do it.

I drew a snowman face on our Ziploc bag, just to make it cuter. Fill it up with snow, but don’t pack it in tight, just fill it loosely. Before you seal the bag, add in a few alka seltzer.

I laid a thick towel over my table, just incase it exploded on us. But this is optional.

We watched it inflate over a period of about an hour. It slowly expanded as the snow melted and caused a reaction with the Alka Seltzer.

Snow Reaction in a Bag

Yield: 1

Active Time: 5 minutes

Additional Time: 1 hour

Total Time: 1 hour 5 minutes

Difficulty: Easy

Estimated Cost: $1

Materials

snow
alka seltzer

Tools

large Ziploc bag
large towel - optional

Instructions

I drew a snowman face on our Ziploc bag, just to make it cuter. Fill it up with snow, but don't pack it in tight, just fill it loosely.
Before you seal the bag, add in a few alka seltzer.
I laid a thick towel over my table, just incase it exploded on us. But this is optional.
We watched it inflate over a period of about an hour. It slowly expanded as the snow melted and caused a reaction with the Alka Seltzer.

Alka-Seltzer is made of citric acid and sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), which is a base. When the tablets are dry, the acid and base powders don’t mix, but as soon as they are immersed in water they mix and react to form carbon dioxide gas.

The same type of reaction is made when you are baking and you mix baking soda and vinegar together.

You can see just how much it expanded here:

After an hour, my kids stopped caring so we stopped. There was still one out of four tablets that wasn’t gone, so it would have continued as the snow melted. They gave it a solid hour which is pretty good.

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While we had this going we watched an episode of Magic S chool Bus – season 1 episode 13 – Kicks Up a Storm. You can also find great science kits that dig deep into the science of weather if your kids are interested.

Wizard’s Brew Fun is Brewing

by Ashley Mullen Leave a Comment

Talk about fun! I’m sure we all have pretended to make witches or wizard’s brew as a child. Now you actually can! I’m always looking for fun things to do with my kids. This is fun to watch no matter how old you are.

Wizard’s Brew

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The weather has been perfect here for this. We can get outside and make a mess! And this outside makes clean up easy as we can just hose everything down. When we did the baking soda bubbles on the kitchen floor, I had a gritty mess to clean. Opps!

This would make a fun Halloween theme science experiment. Use some spooky, Halloween colors for your food color. Orange. Black. Dark green. Red (blood).

How to Make Different Colors for Halloween:

Orange: red and yellow.
Black: 1 part blue, 2.5 parts green, 3 parts red
Dark Green: Lots of blue, little yellow

What you need:

vinegar
glass jar
food color
dish soap
baking soda
glitter (optional)

How to make a Wizard’s Brew:

You’re going to start with your jar (or in our case an old glass candle jar) half filled with vinegar, with a few drops of color added to it. Squeeze in some dish soap, give it a stir.

Now add a heaping spoonful of baking soda. I put our baking soda into a silicone bowl, mainly just to get it outside without losing it all on the walk out, but it also made it easy to dumping into the jar.

The dish soap makes it bubble rather than the quick fizz. A nice volcano eruption. It is not a quick erupt and done, but last for a few minutes.

Now, anything mess related would not be complete without my children playing in the mess. They’re washable. Let them have fun. This has dish soap in it, meaning your children are going to be stained whatever color you use.

This is fun. Go have fun with your kids.