Saturday, September 11, 2010

Baking Soda!

Ever wonder what would happen when you mix certain things with baking soda? I did. Puja and I selected baking soda as our item. We found the physical properties, then we needed to find chemical properties. Everyone has baking soda in their houses, and we wanted to see what would happen when it was places with other household items. We made many conclusions and observations. Here are our results:




Physical:


  • Baking soda is white
  • Baking soda is a solid at room temperature
  • Baking soda is a light, grainy, powdery substance
  • Baking soda does not have an odor
  • Baking soda is soluble in water
                                                                                                      Original
                Baking soda dissolved in water                 

Chemical Properties:

  • First, Puja and I put a teaspoon of baking soda into a bowl. We then added 3 teaspoons of vinegar to the bowl. This mixture grew, bubbling a lot. The vinegar reacted with the baking soda to bubble and foam. The baking soda then dissolved. After we found this, we put the mixture into a pan and put it on the stove to heat it. This immediately caused the substance to bubble again, a lot. The heat made the substance speed up the process, and the bubbling was not boiling, because t=it was immediate. 
                                 Heating the substance after a few seconds


  • Second, we heat the baking soda by itself. The baking soda did nothing. After about ten minutes on medium heat, we decided to turn it off. Heat does not do anything to baking soda by itself, no reaction occurred. 

  • Third, we mixed one teaspoon of baking soda with one-fourth cup of orange juice. We thought this would have a reaction since it has some acid in it. This mixture makes a bubbly orange substance at first, and then it dies down to a creamy, foamy liquid. We then decided to heat the mixture. It rose, bubbled, and foamed. We then let the mixture cool, finding that the liquid left was yellow and transparent, with a little foam on top. The smell had changed also from orangey to bad and cake-like, with just a hint of orange left. 
Before Heat                                                                              After Heat















  • Fourth, we added lysol disinfectant spray to the baking soda. We added 20 squirts to a couple teaspoons of baking soda. The mixture immediately foamed and bubbled, leaving a white foam on top. 

                                      





                       Spraying lysol into baking soda





  • Fifth, we put 3 teaspoons of baking soda in with a fourth of a cup of vinegar. After it bubbled and foamed, we wondered what would happen if we put an egg in the mixture. The egg, especially the whites, reacted very well with the baking soda and vinegar. The egg foamed and grew and would not stop. 


                         Gross. 


During this experiment Puja and I concluded that baking soda reacts with many things, especially things that contain acid. The baking soda makes things grow, which is probably why they use it to cook cakes. We had originally tried to use honey for this experiment. We quickly found that honey is very non-reactant to many things. We wanted to have more fun with the experiment, so we tried baking soda. We were very happy with the results we found. 






4 comments:

  1. Great job! You had a really thorough description on your chemical reactions, which made it easy to visualize the experiments. One question though that I have is: why did the lysol disinfectant spray react with the baking soda? Great job and great pictures of your experiments!

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  2. Great job putting pictures on your blog, as it makes it much easier to read and follow. I thin that in order for this post to be complete it is necessary to show the products of your chemical reactions. Great blog posting, keep it up through out the year!

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  3. KELLYE (and Puja)! Great job on your first blog! I loved seeing all the pictures you guys put in! I was cool to see baking soda react like that. I do have a suggestion! Maybe you could talk about why you knew these chemical reactions were chemical reaction? But otherwise GREAT JOB! Blogs aren't as easy as they seem and take up a lot of work but you guys did great!

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  4. ohemgee great job on your project, but really. You picked a great everyday item to use because it reacted well with a lot of things. I liked the pictures you put up of your experiment and your explanations of the chemical properties was explained very well. Maybe since it reacted so easily to many things you could have tried a couple more chemical properties, but I liked what you did.

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