How to create a volcano in your backyard

Every child is born with a curious mind. They love to experiment, ask questions, and see how things work. This is the best time to do some simple home experiments with them. Today let me share with you how to show your kids how a volcano erupts with simple ingredients like baking soda and vinegar.

This is the fourth post by me under ‘Fun with Science’ section

Ingredients:

10 ml of dish soap

100 ml of white vinegar

Water color

Baking soda slurry (Baking soda mixed with water)

Small empty bowl

Way to do:

Insert a small plastic bowl in between a heap of soil and make it look like a volcano

Add baking powder slurry to it and Add 10 ml of dish soap

home experiment volcano eruption — Add dish soap to Baking Soda

Add water color or food color to it

home experiment volcano — Add water color to it

Now Eruption time ! Add vinegar to this

home experiment volcano for kids and parents — Add Vinegar to Baking soda mixture

home experiment volcano for kids — Volcano Eruption

How it Works:

Baking soda and vinegar react with each other because of an acid-base reaction. Baking soda is a bicarbonate (NaHCO3) and vinegar is acetic acid (HCH3COO). In this reaction, baking soda acts as a base and takes a proton from vinegar, which is an acid. The reaction releases gas because when the baking soda receives the proton, it transforms into water and carbon dioxide which gushes out from the bowl looking like lava.

The chemical reaction actually occurs in two steps. First, there is a double displacement reaction in which acetic acid in the vinegar reacts with sodium bicarbonate to form sodium acetate and carbonic acid:

NaHCO3 + HC2H3O2 → NaC2H3O2 + H2CO3

Carbonic acid is unstable and undergoes a decomposition reaction to transform into water and carbon dioxide H2CO3 → H2O + CO2

Create Volcano in your backyard

Hope you too will try this experiment with your kids. I am sure they would like it