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Dry Ice Bubble Experiment

May 16, 2013 By Christie

I wanted to post this here—next week I’m excited to participate in Delia’s Play It Smart series and thought I’d post this fun activity you can do with your kids here since the post is already done and the kids loved it.  Dry Ice Bubble Experiment For Science Camp with Sabra last year, I was in charge of talking about solids, liquids, and gases.  I had seen THIS YouTube video and wanted to try it out at our Science Camp.  Sadly, my dry ice was completely gone by the time my teaching session came.  But it’s probably just as well because this took a lot of trial and error before we had it figured out.  As in, I tried and tried for over half and hour to get a bubble to not pop over the bowl.  The kids were deferred somewhere else while I figured it out and I did some more experimenting.  I switched bowls in hopes that it was just the bowl I was using.  I searched for more exact bubble solutions to see if that would help.  Nothing had any bubble solution that would work for us.  So I searched for “super strong bubbles” and adapted what I found to make our own bubble solution and guess what?  It worked great!  Hooray!    DSC_1268 So now that we have it figured out so your experiment isn’t a failure like ours initially was, here’s what you’ll need: -dry ice (go to the customer service desk and your grocery store—they probably have some.  It’s about $1.00/pound and we used about 2-3 lbs.).  -2-3 Tbsp. dish soap (Dawn worked great) -1/4 c. corn syrup -bowl and spoon for mixing the soap and corn syrup -about an 18” x 2” strip of fabric—I used flannel –THESE experiment booklets and pencils, if you want your kids to record what they are learning -paper towels or wet rags to clean up your hands—it gets sticky with the corn syrup! -about two cups of water -large bowl or vase  *Each similar experiment said to use a bowl with a lip on it, and I first tried it with a green plastic bowl with a nice lip on the edge.  But I switched to this glass vase and it worked great.  Plus you can see the dry ice and the water mix together to create the gases.  When we were finished with the experiment, I was careful not to add heat to the glass because I was afraid the hot water with the cold dry ice would cause the glass to crack.  You can experiment with different bowls.  Plastic would probably work as well.  DSC_1205   First squirt about 2-3 Tbsp. dish soap into the bowl. DSC_1208 Then pour the 1/4 c. corn syrup into the bowl and mix together.  DSC_1211 Place your fabric strip into the solution and let it get completely saturated. DSC_1212 Have the adult use a hot pad or thick rag to place the dry ice into the vase or bowl.  DSC_1207 *This isn’t pictured, but grab the fabric strip and run it around the rim of the vase—you can see it in the picture below.  Pour the water into the vase with the dry ice. DSC_1216 DSC_1222 Now take the strip of fabric and kind of clean off the excess dripping solution, but leave it pretty soaked.  Just try not to drip a ton into the bowl or it slows the vapor down.  It also starts making bubbles inside the bowl which is cool, but not what we are going for here.  Start at one end of the bowl and run it across to the other side to form a bubble. DSC_1226 DSC_1227 See how my son has left the strip of fabric at the one end?  We found that if we tried to take off the fabric the bubble almost always popped.  So we just kept it on the edge of the vase until our bubble popped.  DSC_1228 Watch the gas from the water and dry ice make the bubble grow… DSC_1229 And grow… DSC_1231 - Copy Bigger and bigger!  DSC_1231 Until it pops.  Fun fun!  DSC_1279 Throughout the experiment, they can be working on their little booklets. DSC_1151DSC_1152DSC_1154                           Then let the other kids try it out.  DSC_1235DSC_1236DSC_1240 If the gas from the dry ice and water starts to slow down, simply add more water.  Even my four year old was able to form a bubble over the top.  In fact, she was the one who got the biggest bubble! DSC_1242DSC_1267DSC_1270DSC_1272DSC_1273 My kids had a blast doing this experiment, and they were quite serious and involved with writing in their booklets.  Here’s how you put them together.  Print them off and cut the excess off the bottom and top.  DSC_1300 Fold in half widthwise.  DSC_1301 Cut just along the dotted lines. DSC_1302 Unfold and fold lengthwise.  DSC_1303 Fold ends in along lines, and then fold them the opposite way. DSC_1304 Make the inner portion fold out into a diamon and push the sides in towards the middle (it will make sense while you are doing it).  DSC_1305 And it should look like this. DSC_1307DSC_1306DSC_1309 The booklet asks questions to get them thinking, along with predicting what they think will happen when you form a bubble over the dry ice.  The key things I wanted them to learn was that gases take the shape of their container, which in this case is the vase and bubble.  But it’s fun to explain to them that something can change from state to state (solids, liquids, or gases), and still be made up of the same substance.  Like the dry ice—although this is a special case because it goes straight from a solid to a gas, it is still carbon dioxide no matter what state of matter it is in. 

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