Fizzy Lemonade!

Evan and Jessie make plenty of lemonade in The Lemonade War. Let's make some of our own and see if we can learn some chemistry at the same time!

Here's what you'll need:

• Lemon juice (either from a bottle or from a real lemon)
• Baking soda
• Water
• Sugar
• drinking glass
• spoon

First, pour 1/4 cup lemon juice (or all the juice you can squeeze out of your lemon) into the glass. Make note of how the lemon juice smells and looks and tastes all by itself. (As you'll notice in my picture, lime juice works equally well.) Add a tablespoon of water to the glass. Then add a pinch of baking soda to the glass. Check out all those bubbles! (You can try adding up to a tablespoon in another glass to watch more bubbles form, but it might not be edible afterward.)

So what's happening? The citric acid in the lemon juice is reacting with the baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) to make the same bubbles you see in soda--carbon dioxide (plus some more water molecules.) Add the rest of your cup of water and stir it up.

What does it taste like now? Take a very, very small taste. What's missing? We have our lemon juice, water, and even some bubbles. So why does it taste so terrible? We're missing sugar (sucrose)! Add 1/4 cup sugar to your lemonade and stir until the sugar dissolves.

When a solid dissolves, its particles break up and spread themselves all through a liquid. But even though the sugar is disappearing, it's definitely still in there! Taste your lemonade for proof. :)

By the way, you can have more chemistry fun by checking out these tasty chemical reactions or by building all of the molecules linked above using this gumdrop molecule activity.

Another Snow Treasure: Ice Cream!

To go along with this week's book, Snow Treasure, we're going to make a snow treasure of our own: ice cream! I love this activity because it gets kids outside, even in cold weather, and can be tailored to a really wide age range. And you can incorporate as little or as much science as you want!

This is a great way to introduce states of matter (solids, liquids, and gases) and the way they change with temperature. Ice cream is a solid with tons of tiny air (gas) bubbles inside (that's why it doesn't taste the same if you melt it to a liquid and re-freeze it--no gas bubbles!) Check out this music video and this printable introduction to get you started. (If snow isn't available where you live, you can make ice cream in a plastic bag using the simple ingredients and simple instructions found here.)

The activity portion of today's post was written by a good friend of mine and an outstanding mother/blogger, Chelsea Gambles. Take it away, Chelsea! :)

 

When fall turned to winter this year, we were all very anxiously awaiting the first snow fall. It seemed like every morning we woke up to find our hopes dashed with more sunny weather, and only brief hints of snow. FINALLY! After months of waiting we finally got our first real snow fall, quite late in the season. We were determined to not let a single snowflake go to waste...but alas little bodies can only take so much cold. We wanted to find another way to make use of this glorious, free and super fun sensory material from mother nature...so we made ICE CREAM....from snow!

Here's how you can do it too:

In a big bowl combine:

• 8 cups of snow

• 1 can of sweetened condensed milk (14 oz)

• 1 tsp of Vanilla

Just stir it up, add your favorite toppings, and it's ready to serve!

 

 

I was shocked just how good it tasted.

(1 billion sprinkles optional)

Thank you, Chelsea! Can't wait to try this with my kids.

Check back next week for another great winter book review and science activity!