Weekly Blog Post - "How Elements React" (5|14|18 - 5|20|18)

Summary: During this week, I reviewed element reactions for my science final project. Our final project requires that we have an interactive "element" (haha see what I did there?) so the rest of the class can be more engaged with the lesson. So for our interactive, we're going with the elephant toothpaste. While researching how the elephant toothpaste works, I learned that in the kid-friendly version, yeast acts a catalyst and the bubbles in the foam from the experiment are a remainder of when the hydrogen peroxide breaks into the water and oxygen. The catalyst is the same when the yeast is swapped out for sodium iodide. I learned that the catalyst is used to speed up the reaction. I also learned that the elephant toothpaste/exploding toothpaste creates an exothermic reaction, meaning the result will give off heat. This is why in the adult version of elephant toothpaste, it is recommended not to touch the foam. (And also because most adult versions use 30% hydrogen peroxide which will burn your skin if you come into contact with it.)

SP1: Asking questions and defining problems. I asked questions such as, "If we used 3% hydrogen peroxide, would we get similar results?" and "If we do use 3% hydrogen peroxide, could we use a bottle with a narrow and long neck to force the solution out? Would there be a lot of heat produced, or would the result be lukewarm?" 

Image Link: Chemistry jokes are Sodium funny! ... I slapped my Neon that one!