The word of the week in our character is curiosity. This week I decide that the pop rocks and soda science experiment teaches curiosity. Curiosity is involves getting our kids to wonder why or how something works. It is such a healthy attribute for our kids to develop a curiosity about life. I have to admit that part of me wondered if I really needed to teach this to my kids at all. I call them all “Curious George.” You may hear me saying, “Curious George, don’t grab that. That’s not for you.” They have to touch everything, know about everything and be a part of everything. My kids are ultra curious about everything that is going on. I need to keep reminding myself that it is a good thing. So, the thought of teaching them to be more curious…well, it was tempting to skip this week. We learned about curiosity this week by a simple experiment that attempts to answer the question, “Will your stomach really explode if you eat pop rocks and drink soda at the same time?”
You will need a 12-20 oz bottle of soda, a balloon, Pop Rocks and a funnel (not pictured). You also may need a toothpick like I did.
Stick the funnel in the deflated balloon. Have the kids dump the Pop Rocks into the balloon through the funnel. My Pop Rocks stuck a little bit, so I used a toothpick to poke it through.
Initially make sure the balloon hangs over the side of the bottle a bit so that no Pop Rocks are falling into the soda.
Next, you want to loosely elevate the balloon so the Pop Rocks fall into the soda. Sorry for the blown out picture. I don’t know what happened.
The kids will see the balloon start to expand. It will not expand a lot, but it will expand.
Why is this happening? The candy has little pockets of pressurized carbon dioxide gas. The soda also contains pressurized carbon dioxide gas. “When the Pop Rocks are dropped into the soda, some carbon dioxide is able to escape from the high fructose corn syrup of the soda and, because the carbon dioxide gas has no where to go in the bottle, it rises into the balloon”. – See more at: https://www.stevespanglerscience.com/lab/experiments/poprocks#sthash.ipWcyobf.dpuf
How fun & creative! Good job Mom!!! ~ Ashlee @ thecrunchymoose.blogspot.com
My son loves experiments like this. Thank you for sharing.
No problem. I hope you have fun!