Spooky season science with a quick bubbling brew experiment! Simple household ingredients create a cool Halloween-themed chemical reaction! Halloween is a fun time of year to try out simple science experiments with a spooky twist.
Fun Halloween Science Experiment
This super easy-to-set-up baking soda and vinegar experiment works for various ages and abilities! Of course, anything fizzing is perfect for Halloween Science!
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Supplies:
- a cauldron (or bowl)
- baking soda
- white vinegar
- food coloring
- dish soap
- eyeballs
Bubbling Brew Experiment Set Up
1. Add a heaping amount of baking soda to your bowl or cauldron. Make sure to place your bowl on a tray, in the sink, or outside because this experiment can get messy.
2. Add a squirt of dish soap and food coloring to the baking soda. Alternatively, you can also mix food coloring into the vinegar.
3. It’s time to add your spooky Halloween eyeballs or other accessories to the cauldron.
4. Now pour white vinegar onto the baking soda and watch the bubbling brew start up!
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What Makes Baking Soda Fizz?
Baking soda is made up of tiny particles called molecules. Each molecule of baking soda has three different elements: sodium, hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen.
Something exciting happens when baking soda comes into contact with an acid, like vinegar! The acid (vinegar) and the base (baking soda) react. The vinegar donates a hydrogen ion to the baking soda during this reaction.
The hydrogen ion combines with the bicarbonate ion in baking soda to form carbonic acid. This is unstable and quickly breaks into water and carbon dioxide gas.
The carbon dioxide gas is why baking soda starts to fizz and bubble. The gas tries to escape from the mixture, creating bubbles that rise to the surface. These bubbles make a fizzing sound and give the impression of a mini volcano eruption!
So, when you mix baking soda with an acid like vinegar, you get a fantastic fizzy reaction due to the production of carbon dioxide gas. It’s truly an exciting and visually appealing demonstration of a chemical reaction!
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Free Witch Theme Activity Pack [here].
More Fun Bubbling Brews To Try
Halloween Art Activities
Go ahead and add some of these favorite Halloween art activities to your countdown!
Printable Halloween STEM Activities Pack
150+ Pages! This Halloween project pack is suitable for home, school, and group use for kids in grades Kindergarten through elementary but is scaleable for many ages and abilities.
What’s Included:
- 25+ Halloween theme science and STEM activities with printable sheets, instructions, and helpful information all using easy-to-source materials perfect for limited-time needs. Includes a Halloween engineering pack with fun, problem-based challenges for kids to solve!
- The skeleton activity pack includes building a skeleton challenge and a coding challenge! Try a skeleton bone bridge-building STEM challenge!
- Halloween theme brick printable activities for hands-on learning with math that is perfect for early finishers or home fun and reinforces basic math concepts.
- Bonus fun pack includes games and activities to round out your Halloween theme, such as I Spy, bingo, matching, Would You Rather cards, scavenger hunt, word search, A-Z Halloween hunt, and a coloring page.
- The Halloween STEAM Pack includes artist-inspired projects by Warhol, Lichtenstein, and more!
Free Printable Halloween Worksheet
Add this quick and free Witch’s Brew printable to your activity! Instant download here.
