Elephant toothpaste

[nestle]

i wanna do a science fair project on "elephant toothpaste" basically it is hydronproxide, dish liquid, and yeast(catalyst), and it causes oxgyen bubbles to foam over the top of the container, so if you light a match and blow it out, and then put it in the foamy substance it reginites. But in order to do the project i need Variables, and i need results that can be displayed in chart, or graph form, what can i change about this project to give it variables, and what can i make my purpose? so i can display my results in chart or graph form.
my project requires
Purpose
Variables (independant, dependant and control)

[deleted-2574]

I hope you realize that elephant toothpaste requires precautions. Here are two references to elephant toothpaste that you might want to use:

1. Elephant Toothpaste - Kid Friendly http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/con ... toothpaste
This is a kid-friendly version of the popular Elephant's Toothpaste demonstration. A child with a great adult helper can safely do it on their own and the results are wonderful. (Note: this version also suggests lab goggles and a lab smock.)

2. A safe version of our "Elephant Toothpaste" demonstration you can try at home:
http://www.sciencealive.ca/elephanttoothpaste.html

The standard elephant toothpaste (which must use 30% concentration hydrogen peroxide) is shown at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nxkMrmZepc

It includes the following warning:
This demo uses a highly dangerous form of hydrogen peroxide, which should not be handled by children, teens or the untrained,
If you feel you must attempt this, please wear safety glasses (at a minimum!!) and rubber gloves.

For variables, from http://www.coolscience.org/CoolScience/ ... s/h2o2.htm mentions four:

1. How much foam is produced, and how quickly?
2. Does it matter if you use lukewarm water to activate the yeast or cold water?
3. What happens if you add more or less soap? 
4. What happens if you don't add any soap?

5. Also there are the different concentrations of hydrogen peroxide. http://www.coolscience.org/CoolScience/ ... s/h2o2.htm mentions
you can get 3% at the grocery store, or 8% at a beauty supply store. (The 30% concentration seems to be the dangerous one.) How does the concentration affect the above?

Items 2 and 3 can be graphed: the quantity of foam produced depending on the temperature of the water and how much soap is added.

[nestle]

inorder to graph this i need to know how much foam is produced, how am i able to measure this to graph it?

As well i want to be able to reingite a match like http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/con ... e-eruption

so can i use a variable like: Does the amount of foam affect how much oxygen is produced when changing the Warm water to cold water to activate yeast? or would it be better to stick to one of the four listed there, and forget the match reingiting thing.

[deleted-2574]

inorder to graph this i need to know how much foam is produced, how am i able to measure this to graph it?

As well i want to be able to reingite a match like http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/con ... e-eruption

so can i use a variable like: Does the amount of foam affect how much oxygen is produced when changing the Warm water to cold water to activate yeast? or would it be better to stick to one of the four listed there, and forget the match reingiting thing.

Hi nestle,

Foam is measured in volume. One way to measure the foam's volume is to see how many cups of foam you generate. You can collect the foam and measure its size in a measuring cup.

I'm sorry, I can't find reingiting a match on the referenced webpage.

Notes: I was suggesting that you could make a graph with temperature of the water on the x-axis and quantity of foam on the y-axis. Similarly, I was suggesting that you could make a graph with quantity of soap on the x-axis and quantity of foam on the y-axis.

These are all suggestions; they may be uninteresting in practice. So, you can collect your data and present the data that makes the most compelling display.

You may add notes that additional data (and you can name the data, if you have room) was collected, that no significant relationships were found, and the data was omitted to save space. Oops, that's going to require a lot of space to say all that. So it may be best to just omit the data. Your judgment.

[nestle]

Hi, the reingnitement was in the video, i forgot to mention that

[deleted-2574]

Hi nestle,

Thanks for the response. I see it now.

What is happening is that the reaction is generating pure oxygen, which is a highly flammable environment. When the flame on the match is blown out, there is still some heat (and maybe some flame) left in the match. When the blown out match is put into a pure oxygen environment, the blown out match, which still has the remnants of the flame, re-ignites.

[nestle]

should i try to include this into my project, or would it be best to keep it simple and on topic ratherr than mutiple topics combined ?

[deleted-2574]

Hi nestle,

In my opinion, it's best to stay on one theme and do it well. Re-igniting the match may be an exception, since it's closely related to the main experiment, and describing it doesn't add too much confusion. Note, you'll need all the usual descriptors - variables etc. if you decide to include the match in your experiment. So, try it both ways, with the match and without the match and see what works out best. It's worth pursuing, since the match is pretty dramatic (as is the elephant toothpaste).