Jello Explosion

I wanted our kids first exploration to be one where they could get their hands dirty. Most of us have probably seen the 'ol volcano erupting demonstration either in a classroom setting or at an elementary school science fair. This is based on the same principals, but includes a hint of fragrance courtesy of Jello.

When you combine baking soda with vinegar, there is a multi-step reaction that happens. This is just what it sounds like, a reaction with many steps, one following another, so that the reaction looks like it only has a single step.

The acetic acid in the vinegar reacts with the sodium bicarbonate in the baking soda to form carbonic acid. This carbonic acid that gets created is unstable, meaning that it can not stay in the form of carbonic acid for very long before it begins to break down into it's component parts... carbon dioxide and water. This is called a decomposition reaction.

Here is our final setup. The essential ingredients are vinegar, baking soda and Jello. The Jello masks the stink of the vinegar. Pick your favorite flavors and as you fan the flames with the vinegar, the room will smell more and more like fruit instead of rotten eggs.

The non-essential but helpful ingredients are baking pans. They help catch the overflow of bubbles that may spill over the bowl. The bowls and spoons help to keep things separated. And the condiment dispenser is what we filled with vinegar to squirt into our mixture of baking soda Jello.

Add some Jello and some baking soda into the bowl.

Stir them together.

And watch your kid's faces as they add in the first drops of vinegar...

... then a little more...

... and then they start to cut loose.

And at some point, it's no holds barred... they wanna see it overflow.

They had no clue what would happen, but when they discovered that adding the vinegar to the bowl of baking soda and Jello would cause it to bubble up under their control... they were all in. They now understand what a chemical reaction is, and they know how to fruit it up when they need to. This was for sure a successful introduction to what we hope to continue doing a couple of times a month.