Hey Everyone! It's the holiday season and for Macademics this month, I decided to post some at home holiday inspired labs! Also, one note, since everyone is going to start traveling soon, next week will be our last posts of 2017 and we'll be back and blogging in January 2018.
Now onto the labs. I chose two, one is to make borax snowflakes and the other is to make a snow globe. The titles of the experiments are hyperlinked to the sites I found them on so try them out with your families and let me know how it goes. I'd love some pictures of your beautiful creations, I'll be sure to share the snowflakes I do with my niece.
Materials
- String
-Wide mouth pint sized jar
- Borax powder
- Pencil
-Boiling water
- blue food coloring (optional)
-Scissors
Directions
Cut a pipe cleaner into three equal sections and twist the sections together at their centers to form a six-sided snowflake shape. Don't worry if an end isn't even, just trim to get the desired shape. The snowflake should fit inside the jar.
Tie the string to the end of one of the snowflake arms and tie the other end of the string to the pencil. You want it to be long enough that the pencil hangs the snowflake into the jar but it doesn't touch the bottom of the jar
. Don't put the snowflake into the jar yet!
Fill the wide mouth pint jar with boiling water.
Add borax one tablespoon at a time to the boiling water, stirring to dissolve after each addition. The amount used is 3 tablespoons borax per cup of water. It is okay if some undissolved borax settles to the bottom of the jar.
If desired, you may tint the mixture with food color.
Hang the pipe cleaner snowflake into the jar so that the pencil rests on top of the jar and the snowflake is completely covered with liquid and hangs freely.
Allow the jar to sit in an undisturbed location overnight and in the morning, you should have beautiful crystals!
Materials
-Rubbing alcohol (isopropyl)
-Baby oil or vegetable oil
-Clear plastic or glass container
-Small beads and/or glitter, sequins, anything small and shiny
-Food coloring
-Clear tape
Directions
Fill a clear plastic or glass bottle 1/4 full of rubbing alcohol.
Add one drop of food coloring if you want to give the liquid mix some color (and make it easier to differentiate the alcohol layer from the layer of oil that we will add next).
Fill the remainder of the bottle with baby or vegetable oil (the oil will sit on top of the alcohol). Leave a bit of room in the lid area for the tiny, shiny stuff.
Add glitter, sequins, small beads or any other tiny, shiny objects.
Fill the remainder of the bottle, all the way to the rim, with oil.
Screw the lid on tightly. Tape it so it does not come loose (or apply a little glue to the inside of the lid before twisting in on). If you are using a wide-mouth jar for your bottle, you can also crazy glue some sort of decoration (e.g. church, snowman, Christmas tree, plastic deer, etc.) to the inside of the lid before putting the lid on the jar.
Gently shake the bottle to mix the alcohol and oil together. The mixture will turn a milky color and the shiny stuff will float and spin in the mixture.
Allow the mixture to settle. The oil will separate from the alcohol after about 5 minutes and there you have your snow globe!
I hope you all enjoy these labs and have a happy and blessed holiday season!
-The Chemist
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