The boys turned 5 this weekend. I know, crazy huh? We managed to keep them both alive for 5 whole years! They decided they wanted a scientist birthday party theme so I did my best to accommodate and I think it turned out pretty well. In case you’d like to do something similar here’s a description of what we did and how it turned out.
Elephant toothpaste – This was fun and very easy. I thought it was a little anticlimactic but they loved it and that’s what counts. To do this activity you’ll need a clean, 16 oz plastic bottle, 1-packet activated yeast, 1/2 cup of peroxide, dish soap, water and food coloring. Add about 1 tablespoon of dish soap to the bottle and then drip food coloring down the inside of the bottle (this will leave streaks). In a separate container mix together warm water and the yeast until it starts to bubble a little. Now, carefully pour the yeast water into the plastic bottle. Right away the dish soap will start to foam and overflow the bottle! (Be sure to have a container under the bottle to catch the foam.)
The foam happens because the yeast acts as a catalyst to separate the oxygen in the hydrogen peroxide. The released oxygen gets trapped in the dish soap making lots of tiny bubbles really quickly. This is an exothermic reaction so be careful – the bottle will get hot!
Gummy juice worms – This one was cool but required a lot of special ingredients so plan ahead. The basic idea is that you use Sodium Alginate (a gelling agent) and Calcium Chloride to make juice into gummy worms. You’ll need Sodium Alginate, Calcium Chloride, a blender, fruit juice and a syringe with a wide mouth or spoon. First, add 1 tsp of Sodium Alginate to 1 cup of fruit juice (use different kinds of juice to make different flavored worms). Blend it up in the blender to remove all the lumps – it’ll get thick. Next, fill a pan with water and stir in 1 tablespoon of Calcium Chloride. Then suck up the thickened fruit juice into the syringe and squirt it into the pan with the water and Calcium Chloride. It should form long strings. (If the syringe gets clogged like ours did you can also spoon the fruit juice mixture in instead to make “caviar”). After the “worms” have set (about 1 minute) scoop them out and rinse them off in a bowl of fresh water and enjoy! Be sure to rinse them off really well or they’ll taste salty.
Ice cream in a bag – This was a huge hit (especially with me, I can’t believe it worked). You’ll need a large ziplock bag and a small ziplock bag, ice, Kosher salt, milk, vanilla, and sugar. In the small bag put 1 cup of milk, 1 tsp of vanilla and 2 tsps of sugar (amounts don’t really matter here, you can just eye ball it). Close the small bag and put it inside the large ziplock with a generous amount of ice and a few shakes of salt. Now shake the bag vigorously for about 10 minutes. We turned on the music and had a dance party. After 10 minutes remove the small bag and enjoy your ice cream! You can also add smashed strawberries, chocolate sauce, etc to liven things up.
Slime – Ah, slime. Also known as mothers bane, carpet killer, and middle school crack. Our version used Elmers glue, Borax, water, food coloring and glitter and I’m going to be honest – we started out trying to measure and follow directions but things quickly devolved and we ended up with slime of every texture and consistency, which was actually kind of cool. Take 1/4 tsp Borax and mix it with 1/2 cup of water. In a separate bowl mix 1/2 c. of glue with 1/2 c. of water. Now combine the 2 bowls and add any food coloring or glitter. We just kept adding different stuff to see what would happen – science at it’s best!
Slime happens because the borate ions in the Borax react with the polyvinyl acetate in the glue. The glue is made up of long strings called polymers and when the borate ions mix with these polymers they get all tangled up and stop acting like a fluid and start acting like a solid. This is called a Non-Newtonian fluid!
Also, they totally loved their “Scientist outfits“!
