At Southwark today, we decided to celebrate the recent Earth Day by doing a science experiment, homemade volcanoes. With the older class, we split them into four groups and handed each group a bottle and construction paper to create their volcano. After this, we poured baking soda, dish soap, and food dye into the bottle. Afterwards, we had volunteers pour vinegar into the bottle until it started “erupting.” This was a super fun experiment for the students. The highlight of course, was watching their volcanoes erupt, but they also were able to mix the food dye to make their own “lava” and understand the chemistry to this experiment.
With our younger class, we had them all draw their own volcano first. Then they decorated a box where the bottle would be sitting in. Each of them then had a part in creating the ingredients for the reaction. Some poured in soap, some baking powder, and some food dye. We used all four colors of food dye, and the class got to see how all of them mixed together made brown. Our last volunteer got to shake all the ingredients together. Afterwards, we placed the bottle in the box and poured in the vinegar. As soon as it began pouring out the top, all the students got super excited and put their hands in the baking soda/ vinegar mix. This class definitely enjoyed this experiment. Most of them had never done an experiment like this, so it was really fun to see their reactions as they helped pour in the ingredients and watch the reaction they created. This was an awesome way to engage the students in science, while teaching them about the earth and mixing colors!
