Fun With Dry Ice

Trying to catch up on a few posts. This one is one of my favorites. One of my favorite things to teach is Science. At this age, students think everything is magical, so no matter how complex or simple the science experiment is, the kids think it's the best thing ever. That alone makes science at this age so much fun! For the following science experiment we made "ghost bubbles."

The items you need are:

- Large chunk of dry ice (this can be found in most grocery stores)
- Large bowl
- Dish soap
- Water

1. Pour the water into the bowl.
2. Add a few drops of dish soap to the water.
3. Using gloves, take a piece of the dry ice and put it into the water solution.

The water should start bubbling. The bubbles will pop when touched and you should see "smoke" come from the bubble when it pops. You can play with the surface bubbles and work it into one large bubble. It's takes some time to get this to happen but it's fun in the process!

As more bubbles are created, it's time to start popping! I let the kids pop the bubbles as they over flow from the bowl. When there is enough, I'll scoop them out and put piles of them on the kid's hands. This is not a harmful experiment as long as the kids do not touch the dry ice. Hence why I'll put piles of bubbles on their hands to pop. Also, once the dry ice wears down to nothing, the kids love to put their hands in and play. By this time the water has become VERY cold. 

Extra Fun? Make a coin SCREAM!
For extra fun, you can do this with dry ice and a coin:

What you will need to do is take a good chunk of the dry ice and place it on a towel. Take a coin, any coin, start to push it into the block of ice. I suggest larger coins like quarters, half dollars, or dollars, so that there is more surface space to work with.

As you begin to push it into the ice, you will begin to hear it "scream."  I would tell the kids that I could make my average quarter sing. After doing this a few times the kids determined that it wasn't singing but instead screaming. So we went with that instead. :)

The reason why the coin screams like that is because of simple science! As you can see from the block of ice, it dissipates when it begins to evaporate from heat. When you push the coin into the ice, the steam from the ice rushes past the coin at a fast rate and causes a whistle sound. Kind of like when you whistle through your lips.

If you let go of the coin, the coin will "dance" and bring even more entertainment. This is caused by the same reason but because your not putting pressure on the coin, the steam will cause it to vibrate instead of whistle.

I hope you enjoy the fun you can have with dry ice!