Bubble Basics

November 12, 2010

by: Michelle Bertke and Melanie Bunda

Bubbles are always a fun and interesting activity for kids of all ages.  However, bubbles are not only fun, they are also an excellent teaching tool for some abstract concepts such as air density, dissolved gasses, and air pressure.  Below is a collection of bubbly activities that highlight each of these topics. Educational Innovations offers a full line of wonderful bubble products!

Gravity Defying Bubbles

Different gasses have different densities.  The air around us is mostly nitrogen (N2) and oxygen (O2), which are both lighter than carbon dioxide (CO2).  When a heavy gas, such as CO2 is placed in a tank, it will sink to the bottom without mixing.  This can be achieved by placing a few blocks of dry ice in a large fish tank or clear plastic bin covered loosely with a lid and allowing them to sublime.  This will take several minutes. Always use caution when handling dry ice by using proper gloves and safety goggles.

Once full, blow bubbles over the surface of the tank.  When the bubbles reach the interface of the two gasses, they will float.  If you fill the tank with CO2 unnoticed, have the kids speculate as to why they think the bubbles didn’t reach the bottom, and what might be in the tank.

An alternative is to fill a balloon with CO2 by filling it with baking soda (or an alka seltzer tablet) and placing it over the opening of a bottle filled with vinegar (or water).  Lift the balloon so the contents spill into the bottle and react with the liquid, allow the balloon to fill from the reaction, twist and remove.  Use it to blow bubbles.  Compare these bubbles to those blown with regular air (use a fan, not your breath for best results).  Have students compare the two bubbles.  Which one falls faster? Which one floats longer? Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted by Tami O'Connor

What Is That Stuff? An Instant Snow Polymer Lab

November 3, 2010

Elaine Kotlerby: Elaine Kotler

I created a lab using the Instant Snow Polymer (Sodium Polyacrylate) from Educational Innovations that I use in my 8th grade Physical Science Class as well as Summer School Programs that I teach for grades 4-9.  This lesson incorporates concepts of Conservation of Mass, Properties of Matter, Metric Measurement and Conversion, and Observation Skills.  The lab, as I give it to the students, is listed below.

Each student receives an empty baggie to be used for comparison, a baggie containing 12 grams of Instant Snow Polymer, use of a balance and a graduated cylinder.

I have already explained the Law of Conservation of Mass, and Density (they need to remember that the density of water is 1 g/ml, or look it up) prior to introducing this lab activity.  However, they do not know the terms exothermic, endothermic, hydrophobic or hydrophilic.  My students are allowed to look them up, but unless they make careful observations as they are conducting the experiment, they won’t be able to answer the questions later.

The final question “What is That Stuff?” garners some interesting answers. Some recognize a use for it as snow for ski slopes; others have suggested material for ice packs.  One suggestion was to use the powder to help clean up and absorb spills. Read the rest of this entry »

3 Comments | Chemistry, Elementary level, experiments, High School level, Middle School level | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Tami O'Connor

Simple Conservation of Mass Activity

October 5, 2010

Lee Walkerby: Lee Walker

When we are doing a Partnership for Learning.com Science Adventure on phases of matter we like having this conservation of mass experience in the bag of tricks. It can be done in minutes and is extremely reliable. All you need is the simplest (and least expensive) OHAUS classroom balance from Educational Innovations, the Ice Melting Block set from Educational Innovations, a pair of wire cutters and some paper clips, (just in case you need to whip up some mass bits of less than a gram) and a nicely formed ice cube. We like to use the aluminum blocks and O-rings from two of the Ice Melting Block sets just to simplify the balancing and have found that having more than one set of the blocks is good for the original activity anyway.

Here we go……. Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted by Tami O'Connor

Density of Gasses

August 13, 2010

Tami O'Connor, Educational Innovationsby:  Tami O’Connor

Why do some objects float while others sink?  Archimedes discovered that an object is buoyed upward with a force equal to the weight of the fluid displaced.  An object will float in a fluid whenever its weight is less than the weight of the fluid displaced; otherwise it will sink…  So what does this mean in English??? An easier way to think about it is that an object that is less dense than the fluid it is in will rise to the top of the more dense fluid.

In demonstrations of liquids of varying densities, the liquid with the greatest density will sink to the bottom of the container while the less dense liquid will remain on the top.  There are wonderful demonstrations you can conduct with your class using immiscible liquids (liquids that do not mix) of different densities, and there are a number of high interest experiments your students can conduct using liquids of different densities.  If you find this topic interesting, please visit the blog we wrote on the W-Tube.

Demystifying the Poly Density Bottle-Educational Innovations Blog

Gasses also have varying densities, but in the elementary and middle school classrooms, students don’t often have the same opportunity to work with gasses as they would liquids, or more often, liquids and solids. Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted by Tami O'Connor

Bring Some Magic Into Your Classroom!

July 10, 2010

Ted Beyer, Educational Innovationsby Ted Beyer

One of my favorite authors, Arthur C. Clark, once said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” This has been quoted, misquoted and reused for years.  Of course, it’s perfectly true, and magicians have been using science as part of their acts for centuries. Things that we take for granted today were once bleeding edge technology. I remember in high school reading that sometime ‘soon’ (this was more than 30 years ago) there would be TVs that would be so thin that they would hang on the wall like pictures – impossible! A generation before, the concept of television itself was astonishing, and a generation before that, moving pictures of any kind were magical.

As I started to think about this, I suddenly realized that there are many products that we sell here at Educational Innovations that are used – currently – by magicians as ‘tricks’ in their act. Let’s take a look…. Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted by Tami O'Connor

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