Photo credit: ComeTogetherKids.com
Ah, the classic ivory bar in microwave experiment. Have you ever wondered why it reacts that way it does inside a microwave? Ivory soap expands in the microwave because soap has water vapors trapped in the center. When you heat up the soap in the microwave these vapors heat up and cause pressure inside the soap. This pressure in turn causes the soap to expand. Continue reading for more.
5. Supercooled Coca-Cola
A liquid below its standard freezing point will crystallize in the presence of a seed crystal or nucleus around which a crystal structure can form creating a solid. One practical example of a product that can supercool is common beverages in a conventional freezer. The Coca-Cola Company also briefly marketed special vending machines containing Sprite in the UK, and Coke in Singapore, which stored the bottles in a supercooled state so that their content would turn to slush upon opening.
4. Penny Battery
The penny battery is a voltaic pile which uses various coinage as the metal disks of a traditional voltaic pile. The coins are stacked with pieces of electrolyte soaked paper in between. The penny battery experiment is often during electrochemistry units in an educational setting. Each cell in a penny battery can produce up to 0.8 volts, and many can be stacked together to produce higher voltages. Since the battery is a wet cell, the effectiveness will be reduced when the electrolyte evaporates.
3. Rocket Fuel
Rocket Candy is a type of rocket propellant for model rockets made with sugar as a fuel, and containing an oxidizer. The propellant can be divided into three groups of components: the fuel, the oxidizer, and the additive(s). The fuel is a sugar; sucrose is the most commonly used. The most common oxidizer is potassium nitrate (KNO3). Additives can be many different substances, and either act as catalysts or enhance the aesthetics of the liftoff or flight. A traditional sugar propellant formulation is typically prepared in a 13:7 oxidizer to fuel ratio.
2. Solar Scorchers
The amount of solar energy reaching the surface of the planet is so vast that in one year it is about twice as much as will ever be obtained from all of the Earth’s non-renewable resources of coal, oil, natural gas, and mined uranium combined. Solar energy can be harnessed at different levels around the world, mostly depending on distance from the equator.
1. Green Fire
It’s fun easy to make brilliant green fire. This cool chemistry project requires only two household chemicals: boric acid and Heet Gas Line Antifreeze and Water Remover. Colored fire is a common pyrotechnic effect used in stage productions, fireworks and by fire performers the world over. Generally, the color of a flame may be red, orange, blue, yellow, or white, and is dominated by blackbody radiation from soot and steam. When additional chemicals are added to the fuel burning, their atomic emission spectra can affect the frequencies of visible light radiation emitted – in other words, the flame will appear a different color dependent upon the chemical additives.
