Physical Science Demonstrations

Wednesday, January 6 was the birthday of my science teacher, Mr. Langdon. Soon after class started Mr. Langdon brought out a bag of dry ice. Everyone was excited because we had been wanting to see some demonstrations with dry ice for a while.  

            Mr. Langdon told us that dry ice is the solid form of carbon dioxide, and is extremely cold. It’s so cold you could get frostbite by only touching it for a few seconds. We also learned that dry ice doesn’t melt; it converts directly to a gas, through the process of sublimation.

Mr. Langdon then took a beaker full of warm water, and put a piece of dry ice in it. He said the water had to be warm because the dry ice would start freezing it otherwise. When he put the dry ice in the water it started steaming. He was able to take the beaker and pour the “steam” out onto Erica’s head, illustrating that a gas is a fluid. Next he mixed dish soap and water into a large graduated cylinder, and then dropped dry ice inside. The concoction created white, translucent bubbles that steamed when we touched them. When he put too much dry ice in it created so many bubbles he had to put the cylinder in the sink. The last dry ice experiment Mr. Langdon did was filling a big bucket with water and dumping the rest of the dry ice into it. It made so much steam, that it spilled over the side of the bucket and made it so that you could barely see the floor near the bucket.

 

            Another fun activity we did that day involved more soap. We took a bar of Ivory soap and stuck it in the microwave. The bar of soap grew and it sort of looked like cotton candy.  We were able to mold and squish the fluff before it cooled too much and became crumbly. The air next to the microwave smelled very strongly of Ivory soap, and all our hands smelled strong as well.

            - Christi Evans, Freshman