We’re a day late, but better late than never! We did do Science Saturday on Saturday, but I had already blogged in the morning, completely forgetting our usual system. And now its Father’s Day, but that post will be a day or two behind regardless. Aaaaanyway, here you have it!
We did the lava lamp experiment!! Maybe you’ve seen it online. It looks suspiciously easy to make a lava lamp tornado ish type of thing. Suspicious enough that maybe you wouldn’t even try it. All it claimed to need was oil, water, food colouring, and an alka seltzer tablet. I looked a little further into it, though, and it seemed like it was real, and doable! All I needed to find was the tablets ($5 for 24) and we decided to give it a try with the kids.
We used a stemless wine glass, so it looked fancy. Laela poured the oil and Dekker poured the water. They layered. The water sat on the bottom of the glass, below the oil.
I did the food colouring, because they couldn’t agree on a colour. Also, because I didn’t want food colouring all over our island.
It just sat at the bottom of the glass in blobs.
Lastly, we bust an alka seltzer tab in half and each kid got to drop their piece in.
Behold! Lava!
We could’ve watched it all day.
When it slowed, we did another tab. And then when everyone was up from naps, we did yet another tab, so everyone could see. It was SO exciting!
So, while I can’t speak to ALL the sciency aspects of it, I can tell you that it works, and is definitely worth a try!!
Choose a glass or a bottle, and fill it about 3/4 full of oil. Top it up with water. Then add roughly ten drops of food colouring. Aaaaand alka seltzer! In my research, some places said to drop in a tab, and some said to break it up a bunch and drop it in piece by piece. I vote break it up into as many pieces as you have people 😉
Its cute, and it works. Enjoy! We did!