Dry Ice Experiments

It is our tradition to order a Turduckin for Thanksgiving dinner. This year when it arrived it occurred to me we should have some fun with the dry ice it used for packing our Turduckin. Thanks to the internet we were able to quickly locate several easy experiments the girls could handle. The first was a comparison of "dry" ice to our regular or "wet" ice. We discovered that dry ice skips the liquid stage which is why it is called dry ice. While regular ice leaves a water puddle behind our dry ice plate was completely dry after the ice melted/evaporated. I was busy taking videos to begin with so if you're interested you can view the video of the girls seeing how the dry ice reacts to both metal and water. After a while the girls added dish soap to increase the bubbles. We had seen that we should be able to create a huge bubble using dish soap. We actually accidentally created large bubbles on our own with the smaller bowls we were doing our initial experments with but weren't ever able to create the really big one when we were specifically trying. Go figure... Reagan was wetting the edge of the bowl with water and soap. I think we were supposed to be able to create a film before adding the dry ice but like I said before it didn't really work. It did create lots of great bubbles though! :)Playing in dry ice bubbles - I have to say these bubbles don't create nearly the mess of regular bubbles I guess because they are essentially evaporating. Who knew there was a mess free bubble play solution???When Jackson woke up from his nap the girls shared some dry ice bubbles with him. I love it when we're able to involve Jackson in our experiments or projects too!Please forgive all my unscientific commentary during this videos...

Testing how the dry ice reacts to metal

Placing the dry ice in water

Placing dry ice in water with dish soap

Jackson checking out the bubbles. I was taking pictures vs videos when he intially woke up so I missed his best reactions. While this video doesn't quite capture his level of interest he does love being a big kid and doing whatever his big sisters are involved with.

This video is a bit out of order, but I realized I hadn't included the video clip of one of the larger bubbles we spontaneously created and did want to post it as well for my own future referance.

This was such a great science experiment for the girls. It was especially neat to be able to incorporate such a spur of the moment activity into our day. This is definitely one of the best parts of Homeschooling i.e. having the ability to take advantage of opporuntities as they present themselves. Sometimes the best learning occurs during unplanned times!

I also thought this was a great opportunity to expose the girls to something that's not entirely safe. We do this frequently with cooking too. We try to be extremely careful and discuss all the dangers but I think it's important for children to be aware of their boundaries, what is and isn't safe, and how things which can be dangerous can be properly handled to our advantage. Again, another advantage of homeschooling is recognizing that there is a learning opportunity in pretty much every activity you do throughout the day. Sometimes I'm better at taking advantage of these learning opportunities than others. I wish all our days turned out this well! :)