Making And Capturing Carbon Dioxide

Recently in science we have been discussing gas, along with other things like solids and liquids. We have been discussing how gas has a volume; how it takes up space. One easy way of showing this to the kids is to make and capture carbon dioxide.

To make and capture carbon dioxide you will need:

• some narrow neck bottles (we used some beer bottles, but any narrow neck bottle will work)
• Vinegar
• Baking Soda
• Balloons

I'm sure most of my dear readers are aware of the bubbling, explosive reaction that baking soda and vinegar have together. That same bubbling, explosive reaction makes a carbon dioxide and you can capture that gas by placing a balloon over the bottle as soon as you mix the vinegar and baking soda.

Web-Princess after doing the vinegar and baking soda several times wanted to see what happened if we mixed the baking soda with other liquids: Water, Milk, and Apple Juice. She chose these other liquids because it was what we had here at the house.

To our surprise we had a reaction, a gas produced, when we mixed the apple juice and baking soda. The picture ABOVE shows that. The bottle in the middle is milk and baking soda, the bottle at the end (left side) is the water and baking soda. The bottle at the other end, with the green balloon, is 100% apple juice and baking soda. So when you mix baking soda and apple juice you get a gas too.

However baking soda and vinegar produces more gas as seen in this picture BELOW:

The bottle with the  blown-up yellow balloon is vinegar and baking soda. The bottle with the green balloon is vinegar and apple juice.

Of course we wonder now if would get a gas with baking soda and other juices like grape, cranberry, orange. However we don't have any more juices in the house. So we would have to wait until we get one of those juices at our next shopping trip. OR you could try this at your house and let us know the results!!!

FYI: We had to shake the juice and baking soda really well after we put the balloon on to get the result we got. If you decided to do this please blog about it and share your results with us! It will be fun to see what others did or what they observed!

Another Side Note: It was great that we decided to do this today when Daddy was home. It was great because often Daddy doesn't see how they react to the hands on activities such as this. It was also great because Daddy got to see our daughter get excited about the reaction of apple juice and baking soda. She went on and on how she discovered it. (After all it was her idea to mix the two items.)

I'm sure they would have had the chance to mix baking soda and vinegar in brick and mortar school. However I don't think they would have had the chance to say okay now lets see what happens when we mix the baking soda with other liquids. Homeschooling allowed us to take this to the next step and start mixing the baking soda with other liquids to see what happens!

Of course you could just blow up a balloon the "normal" way to show how gas has volume, but frankly it's more fun to mix vinegar and baking soda and capture the carbon dioxide!