Pocket Volcano

That's me with my pocket volcano!!

This is very cool chemistry project I did with my mommy today and I learnt that if you mix an acid and a base you get a reaction!

We used a baking powder as base and vinegar as acid and poured into our plastic volcano! When the vinegar touches the baking soda we got a chemical reaction which was our fake lava!!

To make it fun we added some color drops to our vinegar!

You can buy the pocket volcano at www.kids4science.com and you can reuse it over and over again!


What I learnt from this project:
If you mix an acid and a base you get a chemical reaction.

What you need for this project:
Below are the ingredients we used. You can buy them from any grocery store.

Method:

Here is a video of how we did it!

Mommy Notes:What actually happens is this: the acetic acid (that's what makes vinegar sour) reacts with sodium bicarbonate (a compound that's in baking soda) to form carbonic acid. It's really a double replacement reaction. Carbonic acid is unstable, and it immediately falls apart into carbon dioxide and water (it's a decomposition reaction). The bubbles you see from the reaction come from the carbon dioxide escaping the solution that is left. Carbon dioxide is heavier than air, so, it flows almost like water when it overflows the container. It is a gas that you exhale (though in small amounts), because it is a product of the reactions that keep your body going. What's left is a dilute solution of sodium acetate in water. Source: Thinkquest.com.
Since Rehaan is too young to understand this, for now he is just learning that when you mix acid and base, you get a reaction. He made an analogy that when food enters stomach, the stomach acid works on the food and you get a reaction called burp!