IT HAS BEGUN!!!! It is marathon time! Let’s get to it.
There are only two experiments in this chapter of “Dry Ice” and I am doing both today. I just finished the first one.
After a quick trip to Albertson’s for dry ice, I grabbed the eight-pound block of dry ice and began chipping away pieces for this five-part experiment.
I had to use heavy duty snow gloves to protect my hands. Some of you may not know what dry ice is. That is what this experiment is all about! The first part is to see if dry ice and regular ice are the same thing. To do this I put a piece of regular ice on a plate and took a piece of dry ice roughly the same size and set it next to the regular ice. In a little while we will see our results when the pieces of ice melt. But I discovered something that was not mentioned in the experiment. When I picked up the dry ice with the tongs, it began squeaking and singing! Then I put it on the plate and it started to sing and squeak there too! Check out this video and see what I am talking about.
I have no idea why it did that! But I noticed when the plate got cold because of the dry ice, it stopped vibrating! Then I put the ice on a metal pan and it didn't make a sound! Why it didn’t vibrate- your guess is as good as mine.
After I did all of the other experiments (which we will go over in a moment) this is the result of the ice duo.
You can see where the dry ice was (upper left) and the water ice hasn’t completely melted yet but good enough for our purposes. As you can see there is the water puddle where the regular ice has melted, but what about the dry ice? Just a few little pieces of dry ice left, but no puddle. Why? That is because dry ice is made up of carbon dioxide (CO2). The dry ice didn’t melt, it evaporated! It evaporated into it’s natural state, gas! Cool right?
Moving onto the second part of our experiment, I put warm water into a measuring cup and put a chunk of dry ice into that water. Prepare to say “WOW”!!
The dry ice started to give off bubbles and produced fog!!!! That “smoke” is carbon dioxide. The bubbly-ness of it made me feel like an evil super-villain or something, Wahaha! Here is a top and a side shot of the container. Take a look at what is happening.
My brother and I waved the smoke away and my mom got a great picture of what is happening under the mist.
The little white things are smoke-filled bubbles rising to the surface.
For all of you curious ones out there, this is what a evil scientist looks like in the morning.
There, mystery solved!
This next part was not in the book but I really wanted to try it. I have some of Steve Spangler’s “Atomic Glow” solution. I added a few drops to some water.
It kind of glows, huh? you haven’t seen anything yet! I added some dry ice and the wonderful reaction takes place. But that is not all, I grabbed my black light and headed into my darkened room.
Whoa! Now THAT glows! The black light does the trick. I am not sure how it works though. Mm. I should look it up!
This is what an evil scientist looks like at night.
Wow, two mysteries solved in one day!
Now that we know dry ice produces bubbles of fog--what if we could keep those bubbles intact? Yup, you guessed it! A squirt of soap, here we come! I grabbed my graduated cylinder, added some soap to water, and last, but not least, the dry ice.
No need to mix. The dry ice will do that for us. Time to add it in.
It was so cool to see all of those fog-filled bubbles run off the top of the cylinder. When they popped, fog shot out of them. Really cool! When the bubbling slowed down, Afro Bird was born!
Is anyone thirsty? By taking some juice and putting a bit of dry ice in it, you can carbonate your juice.
I had to wait until all of the dry ice was gone. Because it would be very dangerous if I ingested a piece. But afterwards the juice was very good and had a bit of a fizzy bite to it!
Our last experimental adventure through dry ice is probably my favorite. I am going to float a bubble! Filling the tank up with an inch of warm water, I put dry ice into the water.
Then I grabbed some bubbles and blew bubbles onto the fog. This is the coolest thing ever!
The bubble floated on top of the mist! The carbon dioxide stayed in the bucket because it is heavier than air! Check out all the cool pictures we took.
Because carbon dioxide is heavier than air I can scoop out the fog and pour it back in!
I do not know about you but I have learned so much from these five mini-experiments! I also have had a blast!
Well that wraps it up for this experiment. I will post again this evening with the last dry ice extravaganza!
