Science can be so much fun and using household items you can make your very own Lava Lamp.
Your child is going to love doing this science experiment and while having fun they will be learning too. And this momee thinks that is cool!
To make your own Lava Lamp you will need these household items:
A vase (or water bottle will work too)
Vegetable oil
Water
Food Coloring
Alka-Seltzer Tablets
Directions:
First, fill your vase up with 2 parts vegetable oil and 1 part water.
You will already start to see some science just in the first step… if you look at the vase you will see the oil is on top and water is on the bottom. Do you know why?
The science: It is because oil is less dense then water so the oil rises and the water sinks to the bottom.
Like the saying goes Oil and Water do not mix very well this is why.
Then add in your food coloring (any color you want) , Mia chose red and added about 10 drops. Add more or less depending on the size of your vase or bottle. The amount of food coloring you add will not affect your results as long as you definitely add in 10 drops you will see a bright color.
Now, it is time for the fun to begin…
Add in your alka-seltzer tab!
You will see once the alka- seltzer tab hits the bottom of the vase that the colored bubbles start to move up and then come back down.
The science: this is because “The piece of Alka-Seltzer tablet you drop in after releases small bubbles of carbon dioxide gas that rise to the top and take some of the colored water along for the ride. The gas escapes when it reaches the top and the colored water falls back down. The reason Alka-Seltzer fizzes in such a way is because it contains citric acid and baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), the two react with water to form sodium citrate and carbon dioxide gas (those are the bubbles that carry the colored water to the top of the bottle).”- Science kids.com
Mia, was so excited seeing the water bubbles move up and down. She didn’t want to keep her eyes off the vase.
Your child is going to love this and want to keep adding more and more alka-seltzer tablets.
Let them enjoy it and see how cool science is.
You can add another color in to the vase and you will see that the new color (we added blue) stays separate and you can see the color drops of blue within the red.
I love this experiment so much.
Over time with the two colors and using more and ore alka-seltzer tabs it didn’t look as crystal clear as it did with one color but the science behind this experiment still worked great.
I hope you enjoy this experiment as much as we did! I am so glad I saw this post on Science Kids —-> click here
Science = Momee Friends Family Fun!
I bought the Walmart brand of Alka-Seltzer Tabs (it is a package of 36) for under $2.00 so I let Mia add as much alka-seltzer tabs as she wanted. This was not a very expensive project and the whole family enjoyed seeing the end result!