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Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) In Action
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Chemistry Teachers Create Spooky Halloween Effects
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After a meal of hydrogen peroxide, potassium iodide, dish detergent and food coloring, the pumpkin sitting on the lab table in Danielle Block's Oceanside High School chemistry class was not feeling so well. "This is what happens when you eat too much Halloween candy," Ms. Block joked, as foamy liquid spewed from the pumpkin's carved mouth. Ms. Block and her colleagues at OHS treated students to demonstrations of several Halloween-themed tricks to illustrate such prinicples as sublimation (going from solid to gas without the liquid phase), what a catalyst does, the properties of acids and bases, and how oxygen makes a flame burn brighter. "It's a tradition that we do here in the chemistry department to make Halloween fun for the students and also make it educational," Ms. Block explained. Four students, Andrew Kear, Natasha Alford, Jacob Worth and Mayla Campagna, assisted in another experiment that Ms. Block called Witches Brew. Each student was given a beaker of colorless liquid and lines to recite from a poem called The Witches' Potion, while pouring the liquids into other beakers according to Ms. Block's instructions. Mixing the first two colorless liquids created a pink liquid, but pouring the pink liquid back into a beaker filled with colorless liquid made the pink tint instantly disappear. Why? The first liquid was a mixture of a chemical called phenolphthalein in vinegar. Vinegar, an acid, renders the chemical colorless. But when added to a base, like ammonia, it turns pink. Mix it with an acid again and poof, the color is gone. The puking pumkin was performed with a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, potassium iodide as a catalyst (something that speeds up a reaction), a squirt of dish detergent for bubbles and food coloring. Placed inside the pumpkin, the potassium iodide caused the hydrogen peroxide to break down faster than it normally would, releasing oxygen which propelled the contents out of the pumpkin. Ms. Block held a lit match inside the pumpkin to show how oxygen impacts fire. Later this year, as they study these concepts more in depth, chemistry teachers can refer back to these experiments as a memorable reference point. Other experiments included a bubbling cauldron to demonstrate how solid carbon dioxide (dry ice) can transform to a gas without going through a liquid phase and a "crystal ball" (putting a film of soap over the beaker's opening to create gas pressure that inflates a soap bubble). |
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