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THE WORLD’S EASIEST LAVA LAMP!

MATERIALS & APPARATUS

• ~A clean 1 liter clear soda bottle
  ~3/4 cup of water
  ~Vegetable Oil
  ~Fizzing tablets (such as Alka Seltzer)
  ~Food colouring

PROCEDURE
1. Pour the water into the bottle.

2. Use a measuring cup or funnel to slowly pour the vegetable oil into the bottle until it's almost full. You may have to wait a few minutes for the oil and water separate.

3. Add 10 drops of food coloring to the bottle (we like red, but any color will look great.) The drops will pass through the oil and then mix with the water below.

4. Break a seltzer tablet in half and drop the half tablet into the bottle. Watch it sink to the bottom and let the blobby greatness begin!

5. To keep the effect going, just add another tablet piece. For a true lava lamp effect, shine a flashlight through the bottom of the bottle.

HOW DOES IT WORK?
To begin, the oil stays above the water because the oil is lighter than the water or, more specifically, less dense than water. The oil and water do not mix because of something called "intermolecular polarity." That term is fun to bring up in dinner conversation. When you added the tablet piece, it sank to the bottom and started dissolving and creating a gas. As the gas bubbles rose, they took some of the colored water with them. When the blob of water reached the top, the gas escaped and down went the water. Cool, huh? By the way, you can store your "Blobs In A Bottle" with the cap on, and then anytime you want to bring it back to life, just add another tablet piece.

TRY IT YOURSELF!
The project above is a DEMONSTRATION. To make it a true experiment, you can try to answer these questions:

1. Does the temperature of the water affect the reaction?

2. Does the size of the bottle affect how many blobs are produced?

3. Does the effect still work if the cap is put on the bottle?

4. Does the size of the tablet pieces affect the number of blobs created?

* Hey Math & Science members! Wanna try doing this experiment?! I believe we'll have loads of fun doing it together!!

COOL ILLUSIONS!

Illusions are images that use your EYES to confuse your BRAIN

Take a look at this grid:
Did you notice the small grayish dots between the black boxes. They are not part of the drawing - they were put there by your brain! Scientists call this "visual vibration." Basically it means that when you see patterns of black and white, your eye sometimes confuses the two and blends them into patterns of gray that you see here. You are seeing something that is not really there!

This elephant is missing a leg...or is it? The artist confuses his viewer by changing they way our brain is used to seeing things. It seems the more you look at the elephant, the more confusing it gets.

Want to see the gears move? Look at the dot and then move your head towards the screen and away from it.

This uses visual vibrations to create a cool effect. Try moving your head close to, and then away from the screen. The fuzzy dots appear to move.

This simple line drawing is titled, "Mother, Father, and daughter" (Fisher, 1968)because it contains the faces of all three people in the title.How many faces can you find?

Look at the dots in the center. Which one is bigger?Like many similar illusions, the dots are the same size...really!It can be hard to tell because your eye uses the other dots to make a comparison.

Check out the spiral...except it is not a spiral, just circles.Don't believe me? Use your finger to follow the fake spiral.The tilt of the boxes fools your brain into believing it is a spiral.

Hey, this is weird. It looks as though it's moving, but it's not. The shapes confuse the eye (really the brain) into believing that they are moving.

MATH N SCIENCE ROCKS!!!!!

YAY!!!
This is our very first achievement of the year!
This is the first time our club managed to secure a rather "sought-after" title of the year!


Best Notice Board of the Year goes to Math & Science Club!

All thanks to our very own, Notice Board commitee, comprising of Wen Lin, Sok Cheng, Rebecca and I and of course all the members of the club~!

We love this board! It made us really proud! We'd carved a name for ourselves!

Our faces glow with ultimate pride when we see our schoolmates stop by and read the articles on the board!

We promise to bring more pride to our club by securing another similar title for the second-half of the year!

Gorgeous Funny Animals

Photo Session

ATTENTION to Maths & Science Club's Board of Directors!!!

There will be a photo session on the 15th of April(Wednesday) at 11.05 am.

Coca - Mentos Experiment (7th April 2009)

We had loads of fun getting together, conducting fun and easy experiments and at the same time learning some interesting scientific facts!!

This is a brief scientific report on the experiment:

Aim

To investigate the reaction between Diet Coke and Mentos candies

Hypothesis

The reaction between the Diet Coke and the Mentos candies results in an eruption.

Materials

A handful of Mentos and two liter of Diet Coke

Procedure

8 Mentos candies were dropped into a bottle of Diet Coke.

Observation

An eruption occured.

Inference/Explanation

This reaction was thought to occur because of rapidly expanding carbon dioxide bubbles inside once the Mentos were introduced to the carbonation.

Caffeine, potassium benzoate, aspartame and carbon dioxide gas contained in the Diet Coke and the gelatin and gum Arabic ingredients of te Mentos all contributed to the geyser effect.

When Mentos candies were dropped into the Diet Coke, the gelatin and gum Arabic of the candy dissolved and broke the surface tension. This disturbed the water mesh, so that less work were needed to expand and form new bubbles. Each mentos candy has thousands of tiny pores all over its surface. These tiny pores function as nucleation sites, perfect places for carbon dixide bubbles to form. As soon as the Mentos entered the coke, bubbles were formed all over their surface. They quickly sinked to the bottom, causing carbon dioxide to be released by the carbonated liquid with which they came into contact along the way. The sudden increase in pressure pushed all of the liquid up and out of the bottle.

Discussion

1) Why do we use Diet Coke instead of the regular Coke?

The reason that people use diet coke is because they do not contain sugar like regular coke. Non-diet coke contains a large percentage of sugar molecules, which help hold onto the carbon dioxide a lot better, thus preventing nucleation from occuring as quickly, resulting in a weaker reaction.

The absence of sugar in the diet coke residue after the geyser effect caused the resulting mess to be non-sticky and this makes clenup much easier.

Conclusion

The reaction between the Diet Coke and the Mentos candies results in an eruption. Therefore, the hypothesis is accepted.