Home made volcano

[Roo83]

hiya, I have promised ds we will make a volcano this afternoon. Lots of ways on google with clay and bicarbonate soda etc. Anyone done one before? What's the quickest and easiest one to do? Thank you!

We tried that but used denture tablets, olive oil and food colouring in water. It makes a wonderful, bubbling mess and you get to see it if you use a jam jar. It went down very well with my then. 3 yr old and he is always pestering for a repeat. Good fun.

We did the bicarb and vinegar one. It worked pretty well, I didn't have to buy anything new and was fun. I didn't bother with clay - just made a surround for the bottle with newspaper. It disintegrated into a soggy mess but who cares.

I think the recipe was 1/2 bottle of warm water, squirt of wasing up liquid to make it bubbly, food colouring to make it coloured, tablespoon of bicarb. Then top up with vinegar and watch. Leaving out the washing up liquid made a better initial explosion but it stopped quickly. Next time we are going to do more experiments to find out the perfect combination! [geeky science nerd emotiocon]

Thanks very much for these...we made a smallish one today but ds has already asked if we can make a bigger one tommorow!

Roo what exactly did you do please? I fancy having a try but am not entirely sure where to start

We used a pop bottle (small one this time but will use full size next time) and made a surround from card (apparently you can use clay, soil, whatever). We used a small amount of water in the bottom with food colouring in, approx. 100ml of vinegar and then added 2 teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda, and i gave it a little shake. The amounts we used made a good reaction but like camdancer said it didn't last long. I like the idea of testing out a few combinations to see what works! May try denture tablets next time. Anyone find the perfect combo please update (yes, I'm a wannabe science geek too)

Brilliant, thanks for coming back Roo

Can I just ask why do you need a card surround? Does it just stop the bottle from falling over?

And presumably lid on while you are shaking then take it off and stuff comes out the top?

Yep the surround stops it falling over, and also makes it look like a volcano rather than just a bottle fizzing over. I kind of swirled it more than a hard shake so it didnt spill, yes you need the lid off for it to errupt. Have fun and let me know if you try anything else...I'm not very good at crafty things but really trying at the moment!