- Before you even go shopping for chemicals to react, look around your home for chemical ingredients that you can use for reactions and experiments. Items such as antacid tablets that fizz in water, baking soda, soap, juices and cleaning products are all excellent candidates for use in your chemical reactions.
There are also many chemistry items that you can find easily at the store. Steel wool, used for scrubbing purposes, has excellent uses in science experiments. You can buy dry ice, which is frozen carbon dioxide, at many grocery and party supply stores.
Do not just start mixing chemicals. Some substances, even common and apparently safe items found in homes, can create potentially dangerous liquids and gases during chemical reactions. Check chemical safety guidelines before you create a reaction between two new substances. If they are incompatible, do not mix them in any chemical reactions and do not discard them at the same time (even down the drain of your sink). The results, including corrosive acids, toxic gases and even explosions, can be dangerous to the environment or to your health. - You can perform a fun and safe acid-base reaction using vinegar, baking soda and a plastic bottle. Partially fill the open bottle with vinegar. Add a spoonful of baking soda to the vinegar and observe the result. The mixture should begin to foam and bubble. Add more baking soda and continue to observe. For a fun twist on the experiment, mix in a small amount of dishwashing soap and watch for an explosion of bubbles.
This experiment works because vinegar is an acidic substance, while baking soda is more basic. When an acid and a base meet, they cause a neutralization reaction that produces water and a new compound. In the case of vinegar and baking soda, one of the products is the carbon dioxide gas, creating the bubbles. You can also use a homemade pH indicator in this experiment to watch the pH level change as the acidic vinegar neutralizes. Add the juice from boiled red cabbage and watch it change from red (showing an acid) to purple (a neutral mixture) to greenish (a base) with the addition of baking soda. - Put a small clump of steel wool in a jar with a thermometer and read the temperature. Remove the steel wool and soak it in vinegar for a minute or two. Squeeze out the vinegar and return the steel wool to the jar, wrapping it around the bulb of the thermometer. Close the lid of the jar and watch the thermometer over the next five to 10 minutes.
In this case, the vinegar reacts with the surface of the steel wool, removing any protective outer coverings and causing the iron in the wool to begin to rust. Rusting is the reaction of a material (in this case, iron) with the oxygen in the air. This chemical process results in heat as one byproduct. If you leave the steel wool alone for several days, you will begin to see another sign of a chemical reaction: color change as the steel wool changes from silvery-gray to brownish-red.
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