Safe and Simple Water Experiment For Your Little Explorers!
Usually if you try to hold water, it slips through your fingers quicker than sand through an hourglass! However, with a little bit of chemical bonding, you can pocket, juggle, and even bounce a ball of water without spilling a drop! By mixing Sodium Alginate with calcium lactate in water, the chemicals form an elastic “bubble” structure around the water in a matter of seconds, creating our new playful water ball!
Materials:
- 1g of sodium alginate (a natural substance derived from brown seaweed)
- 5g of food-grade calcium lactate (a type of salt that can be found commonly in cheese and gum)
- A bowl filled with 1 cup of drinking water
- Another bowl filled with 4 cups of water
- Another bowl filled with water for rinsing off the “bottles” – An immersion blender (or regular blender)
- A deep spoon (like a measuring spoon)
Directions:
- First, add a tiny bit of special stuff called “sodium alginate” into a cup of water. Use a special blender to mix it really well until it disappears into the water. Then, leave it alone for a little while to let any tiny bubbles go away.
- Now, take another kind of special stuff called “calcium lactate” and put it in a big bowl with lots of water. Give it a good stir with a spoon.
- Get a deep spoon and scoop some of the first mixture (the one with sodium alginate) with it. Very carefully drop it into the big bowl with calcium lactate. Do this gently, and don’t put too many in at once.
- Use the spoon to softly stir the little bubbles in the big bowl for three minutes. It’s like giving them a little bath.
- After three minutes, use a special spoon with holes to take out your “bubbles” from the big bowl. Put them in another bowl with clean water to stop them from changing.
Now, you’ve made some special water “bubbles” that you can have fun with, whether you want to drink from them or just play around! Enjoy!