DANCING SPAGHETTI EXPERIMENT

Today we did a fun experiment. I got the idea from a website. It is a good experiment to see how CHEMICAL REACTIONS work and also learned about MASS,VOLUME and DENSITY. We got some cooked spaghetti and put it in a pot with some chemicals inside to see if we could get them to move around and dance. The chemicals we put in the water were:

VINEGAR
BICARBONATE OF SODA
FOOD COLOURING

What happened?

The spaghetti bobbed up and down.

 

Why does it work?

 

The chemical reaction is caused when the vinegar and bicarbonate of soad react to one another and make CARBON DIOXIDE.

The surface of the spaghetti is rough and tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide gas are attracted to it.

These bubbles make the spaghetti bigger (increases the VOLUME) but does not change its weight (MASS). This lowers the DENSITY of the spaghetti. The water around it is more dense so the spaghetti is carried upwards.

This was all discovered by the ancient scientist ARCHIMEDES who was the first person to understand why things FLOAT.

 

This is ARCHIMEDES' PRINCIPLE

This is the force placed on a fluid is the same as the weight of the fluid displaced.

 

This explains why boats float and why life jackets work.