Hey chemists and delinquents of the fediverse, I need some chemical experiments to do with little miss 5 during the next 2 weeks of winter school holidays. She loves making “potions” and wants to be a “scientist” so I’m after some exciting mixtures to make with her.
Assume we have basic PPE like goggles, gloves, dust masks, jackets, but no heavy-duty PPE like respirators or fume closets.
Small fires are OK, but big fires or lots of smoke that would get emergency services called out wouldn’t be. Chemicals that I can get from a supermarket or hardware store, or even a specialist chemical store without needing a license or being put on another list, would be ideal. Easy disposal is a must, I don’t want to call EPA again.
Please share far and wide, the more recipes I can get the better!
@jpm you can do quick rusting in a jar, and you can demonstrate gas takes up more space than liquid either with a balloon or a sealed plastic bottle that you generate some CO2 inside. You can prove ice expands relative to water, but most things do the opposite. You can show evaporative cooling by shaking a wet towel around in the air. You can make supersaturated sugar water, show differing max concentrations at different temps, show how salt lowers boiling temp, and make supercooled ice in a smooth container that you then flash freeze by whacking it. In case any of these initially sound boring you can also incorporate betting, either on outcome or a specific measurement -- you bet against her about some quantity you'll then measure. You can challenge her to come up with her own experiments after a few of these (it's okay if they're "does microwaving water make it hot?") and play scientist all the way to publishing (have her draw up an explanation for a "textbook"), with rewards for completed experiments and writeups regardless of whether hypotheses were correct, of course. Or challenge her to come up with an experiment that you'd need to go get ice cream cones together to test out, etc. For me as a kid the experimentification of everyday life was an absolute joy -- and I wasn't raised by scientists, just people willing to make any question an experiment.
