SIMPLE SCIENCE FAIR EXPERIMENTS: Want a Volcanic Eruption of Your Own Which is Not Harmful?

HOW TO MAKE VOLCANO OF YOUR OWN WITH KITCHEN ITEMS.

Kyamelia Mandal
class 11 B
roll no. 04.


      It's fun to have a volcano of your own. Oh,wait! It's not going to erupt against your wishes.
      HAPPY EXPERIMENTING, CHEERS! :)

The Ingredients.

INGREDIENTS:

• Baking soda.
• Vinegar.
• Detergent.
• Flour.
• Oil.
• Salt.
• Water.
• A small empty drink bottle.
• Food-Colouring Agent (Optional).

PROCEDURE:

1. Mix together 3 cups of flour, 1 cup salt, 1 cup water and 2 tablespoons of cooking oil. 

Mixing the Ingredients.

2. You can add a few drops of food colouring to make it volcano coloured.

3. Fill the empty drink bottle mostly with hot tap water. 

4. Add a pinch of dish-washing detergent and 2 tablespoons baking soda. A few drops of food colouring can be added too.

5. Set the drink bottle in the center of the pan or deep dish. Press the dough around the bottle and shape it like a volcano.

 6.  Do not plug the opening of the bottle.

7. Pour some vinegar into the bottle which contains hot water, dish-washing detergent and baking soda.

8. The eruptions start now.For more volcanic eruptions add vinegar and baking soda.

Your Volcano is ready! 

THE SCIENCE BEHIND THIS EXPERIMENT:

Acetic acid (a weak acid) reacts with and neutralises Sodium bicarbonate (a base). The Carbon dioxide that is given off is a gas. Carbon dioxide is responsible for the fizzing and bubbling during the eruption.

          SOME FACTS REGARDING ELEMENTS

1.The only elements that are liquid at room temperature are bromine and mercury. However, you can melt gallium by holding a lump in the warmth of your hand.

2.Unlike many substances, water expands as it freezes. An ice cube takes up about 9% more volume than the water used to make it.

3.If you pour a handful of salt into a full glass of water, the water level will actually go down rather than overflowing the glass.

4.There is about 1/2 lb or 250 g of salt (NaCl) in the average adult human body.

5.A pure element can take many forms. For example, diamond and graphite both are forms of pure carbon.

6.The chemical name for water (H2O) is dihydrogen monoxide.
7.The only letter that doesn't appear on the periodic table is J.

8.Lightning strikes produce O3, which is ozone, and strengthen the ozone layer of the atmosphere.

9.The only two non-silvery metals are gold and copper.

10.Although oxygen gas is colorless, the liquid and solid forms of oxygen are blue.

11.The human body contains enough carbon to provide 'lead' (which is really graphite) for about 9,000 pencils.

12.Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, while oxygen is the most abundant element in the earth's atmosphere, crust, and oceans (about 49.5%).

13.The rarest naturally-occurring element in the earth's crust may be astatine. The entire crust appears to contain about 28 g of the element.

14.Hydrofluoric acid is so corrosive that it will dissolve glass. Although it is corrosive, hydrofluoric acid is considered to be a 'weak acid'.

15.One bucket full of water contains more atoms than there are bucketfuls of water in the Atlantic ocean.

16.Approximately 20% of the oxygen in the atmosphere was produced by the Amazon rainforest.

17.Bee stings are acidic while wasp stings are alkaline.

18.Hot peppers get their heat from a molecule called capsaicin. While the molecule acts as an irritant to mammals, including humans, birds lack the receptor responsible for the effect and are immune to the burning sensation from exposure.

19.Dry ice is the solid form of carbon dioxide, CO2.

20.Liquid air has a bluish tint, similar to water.

                                                   
                  BY-ANIRUDDHA MUKHERJEE

                               XI-B  ROLLNO-12

Write a Secret Message

WRITE A SECRET MESSAGE

Write an invisible message on a mirror using a soapy solution and a cotton swab. The secret message will appear only in a foggy room.

What you need:

• liquid dishwashing detergent
• cup of water
• a few cotton swabs
• hand mirror or bathroom mirror

What You Do:

Place a few drops of dishwashing detergent into the cup of water. stir to mix well. This is your secret message “ink”.

Dip a cotton swab into the soapy solution. Write a short message on the mirror. When the liquid dries, the message will be invisible. (If not, use a little less of the solution.)

When you take a hot shower or bath, do not get the mirror wet, but get the mirror close enough to the steam from the water so that it gets fogged up. Close the door so the steam stays in the bathroom.

Observe what happens. Can you read the message?

More fun: Write a message and wait until someone else takes a shower or bath. See how quickly they discover your secret.

What’s Going On :

The steam on the mirror is made up of water molecules. These tiny drops of water stick together on the mirror because of a force called surface tension. The liquid dishwashing detergent breaks the surface tension of the water. Wherever there is detergent, the water molecules are unable to form into droplets. The words written with the soapy solution stand out clearly against the foggy background of the mirror.

Posted by Ankita Das,

Class XI, B

Chemistry is Fun: Make Your Own pH Paper.

Ahelee Sarkar

Roll no. 24

How To Make Red Cabbage pH Paper

It's easy, safe, and fun to make your own pH paper test strips. This can be done from home, though calibrated test strips would work in a lab, too.

Time Required: 15 minutes plus drying time

1. Cut a red cabbage (or purple) into pieces such that it will fit into a blender. Chop the cabbage, adding the minimum amount of water needed to blend it (because you want the juice as concentrated as possible). If you don't have a blender, then use a vegetable grater or chop your cabbage using a knife.
2. Microwave the cabbage until it's at the boiling point. You'll see the liquid boil or else steam rising from the cabbage. If you don't have a microwave, soak the cabbage in a small volume of boiling water or else heat the cabbage using another method.
3. Allow the cabbage to cool (about 10 minutes).
4. Filter the liquid from the cabbage through a filter paper or coffee filter. It should be deeply colored.
5. Soak a filter paper or coffee filter in this liquid. Allow it to dry. Cut the dry colored paper into test strips.
6. Use a dropper or toothpick to apply a little liquid to a test strip. The color range for acids and bases will depend on the particular plant. If you like, you can construct a chart of pH and colors using liquids with a known pH so that you can then test unknowns. Examples of acids include hydrochloric acid (HCl), vinegar, and lemon juice. Examples of bases include sodium or potassium hydroxide (NaOH or KOH) and baking soda solution.
7. Another way to use your pH paper is as a color-change paper. You can draw on pH paper using a toothpick or cotton swab that has been dipped in an acid or base.

TIPS:

• If you don't want colored fingers, soak only half of the filter paper with the cabbage juice, leaving the other side uncolored. You'll get less usable paper, but you will have a place to grab it.
• Many plants produce pigments that can be used as pH indicators. Try this project with some of the other common home and garden indicators.

What You Need

• Red Cabbage
• Filter Paper or Coffee Filters
• Blender - optional
• Microwave - optional
• Dropper or Toothpicks - optional

Recent Discovery: Banana Peels Purify Water

Ahelee Sarkar

Roll no. 24

BANANA PEELS FOUND TO BE VERY EFFECTIVE IN PURIFYING WATER!

Banana Peel Applied to the Solid Phase Extraction of Copper and Lead from River Water: Preconcentration of Metal Ions with a Fruit Waste

An interesting discovery has been recently made by a group of researchers from Brazil's Instituto de Biociencias de Botucatu at the Universidade Estadual Paulista led by Gustavo Castro. According to their report published in Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research journal, minced banana peel can be used as a water purification material. In fact it considerably outperforms many other materials used to clean water.

Researchers discovered that waste from industrial, mining and agricultural activities can have a serious negative impact on the condition of waterways. Components like lead and copper negatively influence health and the environment and ways of removing them can be rather costly and even destructive in the long run.

This is why a lot of scientist attempted to discovered a chemical-free solution that could solve the problem. It is worth mentioning that previously researchers used coconut fibre and peanut shells to purify water, removing toxins from it.

The latest discovery shows that minced banana peel has the potential of removing lead and copper from waterways quickly and effectively.The test that the research group carried out showed that a banana skin water treatment apparatus can be used to purify water up to 11 times.

This article reports on an investigation into the ability of minced banana peel to extract lead and copper ions from water and the parameters involved in this process. The kinetics of copper and lead uptake reached equilibrium in 10 min and the extraction of metals ions was favorable above pH 3. The medium was characterized by FTIR, which showed absorption bands of carboxylic and amine groups at 1730 and 889 cm¹, respectively. The adsorption isotherm fitted by Langmuir’s model showed maximum adsorption capacities of 0.33 and 0.20 mmol g⁻¹ (or 20.97 and 41.44 mg g⁻¹) for Cu(II) and Pb(II), respectively. Minced banana peel was applied in the preconcentration system and showed approximately 20-fold enrichment factor and the column was reused for 11 cycles without loss in the percentage of recovery. The proposed method was applied in the determination of Cu(II) and Pb(II) in a sample of raw river water and was validated by comparison with a standard reference material.

Source: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ie101499e

chemistry experiments

Acids and Bases

Topic : Disappearing ink

Timing : 30 min.

Apparatus and equipment (per group)

1. 100 cm3 Beaker
2. 10 cm3 Measuring cylinder
3. Small paint brush to test the ink.

Chemicals (per group)

1. Ethanol (Highly flammable)
2. Sodium hydroxide 0.4 mol dm–3 (Irritant)
3. Thymolphthalein solution (50 per cent water, 50 per cent ethanol) (Highly flammable)

Background theory :

1. The amount of indicator can be adjusted to give a deep blue colour. The compound produced, Na2CO3, is commonly called washing soda.
2. Sodium hydroxide reacts with carbon dioxide in the air to form sodium carbonate. 2NaOH(aq) + CO2(g) -- Na2CO3(aq) +H2O(l)
3. Sodium carbonate is less basic than sodium hydroxide and causes the indicator to change from blue to colourless. The colourless range for thymolphthalein is below pH 9.3. The blue range is above pH 10.5 and the colour change takes place between these two. The alcohol evaporates and leaves a clear and colourless residue.

Procedure:

1. Place 10 cm3 of ethanol (Highly flammable) in a small beaker.

2. Add a few drops of thymolphthalein (Highly flammable) indicator solution.

3. Add just enough NaOH solution (Irritant), dropwise, to produce a deep blue colour in the solution.

4. Using a small paint brush test the ‘disappearing ink’ on a white page.

Safety : Wear eye protection.

HAVE A LOOK IN AMAZING SCIENCE  {CLICK PLEASE}

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g372QYxa8bI&feature=player_embedded

EESHA MOHANTY

Roll no. 3

7. What molecule has the same shape as a soccer ball?

Carbon exists in its elemental form in diamonds and graphite as continuous structures. It also exists in a molecule form, the simplest of these being buckminsterfullerene, more commonly known as fullerene, and which has 60 carbon atoms arranged in the shape of a soccer ball.
These, and another form of carbon - where the atoms are arranged in cylinders (nano-tubes) - feature in nano-technology.

FACTS PART-1

• The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as a substitute
for Blood plasma.

• No piece of paper can be folded in half more than seven (7) times.

• Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes.

• You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching television.

• The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's gum.

• The King of Hearts is the only king WITHOUT A MOUSTACHE

• American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one (1) olive from each salad served in first-class.

• Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.

• Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning.

• Most dust particles in your house are made from DEAD SKIN!

• The first owner of the Marlboro Company died of lung cancer.

• Walt Disney was afraid OF MICE!

• PEARLS MELT IN VINEGAR!

• The three most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.

• It is possible to lead a cow upstairs...but, not downstairs.

• A duck's quack doesn't echo,and no one knows why.

• And the best for last.....Turtles can breathe through their butts.

• Dentists have recommended that a toothbrush be kept at least
six (6) feet away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush.