Puking Pumpkin Experiment

Puking Pumpkin Experiment

A pumpkin throwing up is sure to delight everyone, young and old! This puking pumpkin can get a bit messy in a fun way! It’s the perfect addition to our pumpkin volcano and another fantastic example of a chemical reaction involving baking soda and vinegar.

YOU WILL NEED:

• Small Baking Pumpkin
• Baking Soda
• Vinegar
• Food Coloring
• Dish Soap
• Container (to catch the fizz)
• Knife to carve out the hole (for adults to do!)

How to Set Up a Puking Pumpkin

1: Grab a pumpkin! You can use just about any pumpkin, white or orange. Baking pumpkins are usually a great size, and you can pick them up in your local grocery store. A bigger pumpkin will work, but you will need more baking soda and vinegar, which isn’t bad either!

🛑 An adult should use a knife to cut a hole in the top of the pumpkin.

Next, you will want to clean out the guts. You can even save them for a pumpkin squish bag!

💡 Make sure to have a surface or area you can easily clean up. You can start by placing your pumpkin in a pie dish, container, or a large mixing bowl to catch the overflow.

2: Then, you will want to carve your puking pumpkin face. It can be happy, scared, or scary; it’s up to you, but it will look funny “puking” anyway.

3. Have the kids put about 1/4 cup of baking soda into the pumpkin.

4. Add a squirt of dish soap if you want a foamier eruption! The chemical eruption will produce frothier bubbles with the added dish soap and create more overflow too.

5. Add a few drops of food coloring. You can also add food coloring to the vinegar for a deeper color eruption.

6. It’s time to add the vinegar and observe the chemistry at work!

Tip: Pour the vinegar into a container that is easy for small hands to squirt or pour into the pumpkin.

Now get ready to watch the fun as your pumpkin pukes!

Puking Pumpkin Science

Throwing up pumpkins isn’t just a gross Halloween activity! It’s also a fantastic chemistry demonstration about states of matter, including liquids, solids, and gases.

A chemical reaction occurs between two or more substances that change and form a new substance and, in this case, a gas called carbon dioxide. In this case, you have an acid (liquid: vinegar) and a base solid: baking soda) When combined, it makes a gas called carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide gas appears as bubbles. If you listen closely, you can even hear them.

The dish soap is added to collect the gas and form bubbles, giving it a more robust pumpkin volcano-like flow down the side! That equals more fun! You don’t have to add dish soap, but it’s worth trying. Or you can even experiment to see which eruption you like more.

Printable Halloween STEM Activities Pack

150+ Pages of Halloween-themed materials! This Halloween project pack is suitable for home, school, and group use for kindergarten through elementary school kids, but it is scaleable for many ages and abilities.

What’s Included:

• 25+ Halloween theme science and STEM activities with printable sheets, instructions, and useful 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 bones 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 activities such as I Spy, bingo, matching, Would You Rather cards, scavenger hunt, word search, A-Z Halloween hunt, and a coloring page.
• Halloween STEAM Pack includes artist-inspired projects by Warhol, Lichtenstein, and more!