Weird Science

We have been getting into the science books lately. Orion really loved the whole vinegar and baking soda thing. We also did the egg floating in salt water as opposed to fresh water. The dancing raisins were good for several minutes of amusement:


I was amazed they did this for HOURS!

But the rocket balloon was by far the biggest hit of the day:


At the end of the day, we left this setup in the window:
Ah, mashed overripe banana. How much gas will it give off?
This is as big as it got. I was hoping it would actually start to blow up. Not sure why it didn't, but it for sure filled up a bit. And yeah, my window is dirty lol.

We got a chance to talk about a few neat things in this process. One was how fast reactions happen. He kept asking when the banana was going to DO something. I pointed out the baking soda and vinegar was a very fast reaction and didn't last as long, the raisins in soda water took a minute or so to get going, but lasted a long time. Now this is a super slow but ongoing reaction of many days.

The book we have also talks about the scientific method, so when Orion remarked he thought I should use more banana, I said, "Hey, I think you have a hypotheses. Are you thinking if I use more banana, more gas would be given off?" He said yes, but I only had 1 banana. I said if we did have more, we would need an exact same bottle and same balloon. He asked why so we got to talk about the principle of controls.

Fun! I love doing science experiments. There were a bunch I didn't have the items for, so now I have a shopping list!