Bubbling Concoctions Experiment
Experiment
- Fill the Baby Soda Bottle with the vegetable oil to the top with room temperature water. If you have already used the bottle with the vegetable oil, fill an empty Baby Soda Bottle with oil up to the cap line, then the rest with water.
- Push the bottom of the bottle into the open end of the cap so it stands by itself on the table.
- Drop two Color Fizzer tablets into the Baby Soda Bottle. Remember your color mixing? You only have three colors of tablets, yellow, red, and blue. If you want to make green, drop in a blue tablet and a yellow tablet. Orange, a red and a yellow tablet. Purple, a red and a blue. If you don’t want to mix colors, just drop in two red, two blue, or two yellow tablets. As soon as the tablets pass through the oil and land in the water, a fizzing reaction will start to occur. It’s (almost) just like a lava lamp! Like, totally cool, man.
- When the bubbling slows down, take a piece of one of the Flat Fizzer tablets to start the reaction again!
- To slow the reaction down and stop it completely, screw the cap onto the bottle. At this point you have a perfect wave tube. Whenever you want to do the experiment again, unscrew the cap and add another piece of the Flat Fizzers.
If you are feeling ambitious, try using the Baby Soda Bottle Rack with all six bottles to create the perfect rainbow bubbling concoctions.
Materials List
- Baby Soda Bottle with Cap
- Vegetable oil
- Color Fizzer Tablets
- Flat Fizzer Tablets
- Water
- Adult supervision
How Does It Work?
First of all, you confirmed what you probably already knew… oil and water do not mix. The molecules of water do not like the molecules of oil. They’ll truly mix with each other only under special circumstances. Even if you shake or stir the mixture like crazy, the oil breaks up into smaller blobs, but it just won’t mix with the water. Also, the Color Fizzers only mix with water. They don’t color the oil at all. Blobs of color you see in the oil are just tiny water droplets.
When you pour the water into the container with the oil, the water sinks quickly to the bottom and the oil stays on top. You see this when oil from a damaged ship spills into the ocean. The oil floats on top of the water. Oil floats on the surface because water is “heavier” than oil. Scientists say that the water is more dense than the oil so it moves below the oil.
Here’s the surprising part… The Fizzer tablets react only with the water to make tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide (CO2) gas. These bubbles attach themselves to droplets of colored water and carry them to the surface of the oil. The gas bubbles are less dense than even the oil. When the bubbles pop at the surface, the colored water blobs sink back to the bottom of the container for another ride to the surface. Now, that’s a burst of pop-culture color! Your own homemade lava lamp… groovy baby!
Take it Further!
Experiment
- Fill the Baby Soda Bottles with the vegetable oil to the cap line. Top each off with room temperature water.
- Drop two Color Fizzer tablets into each Baby Soda Bottle. From left to right use these color tablet combinations:
- Two red tablets
- One red, one yellow
- Two yellow tablets
- One yellow, one blue
- Two blue tablets
- One blue, one red
- When the bubbling slows down, take a piece of one of the Flat Fizzer tablets to start the reaction again!
- To slow the reaction down and stop it completely, screw the cap onto the bottle. At this point you have a perfect wave tube. Whenever you want to do the experiment again, unscrew the cap and add another piece of the Flat Fizzers.
Now you have your Rainbow Bubbling Concoctions!
Materials List
- 6 Baby Soda Bottles
- Baby Soda Bottle Rack
- Vegetable oil (a large quantity so the cheaper the better)
- Color Fizzer Tablets
- Flat Fizzer Tablets
- Water
- Adult supervision
Take it Even Further!
Experiment
- Fill the glass 3/4 full of vegetable oil. Add water to top off the glass.
- Balance the glass on your flashlight. It’s best to have a flashlight with a large diameter so you can balance it facing up with ease.
- Add several drops of food coloring to the glass. The food coloring will drop through the oil and land in the water coloring it.
- Drop a Flat Fizzer into the glass to start the bubbling reaction.
- Turn on the flashlight and turn of the lights in the room. Now you have created your own bubbling lava lamp!
- When the bubbling slows down, take a piece of one of the Flat Fizzer tablets to start the reaction again!
Materials List
- Large Glass
- Vegetable oil (a large quantity so the cheaper the better)
- Food Coloring
- Flat Fizzer Tablets
- Large Flashlight
- Water
- Adult supervision
Additional Information
Remember that food coloring will stain your clothes and skin. Be careful not to get it on your clothes as you will not be able to remove the color.
Science Fair Connection
Creating bubbling concoctions is pretty cool, but it isn’t a science fair project. You can create a science fair project by identifying a variable, or something that changes, in this experiment. Let’s take a look at some of the variable options that might work:
- Use different amounts of Flat Fizzer tablets. If you use less does the reaction happen slower or faster? Time the reaction to see how long each lasts.
- Try changing the amount of oil and water in each Baby Soda Bottle. Does this effect the reaction at all?
That’s just a couple of ideas, but you aren’t limited to those! Try coming up with different ideas of variables and give them a try. Remember, you can only change one thing at a time. If you are testing different liquids, make sure that the other factors are remaining the same!
