KATE THE CHEMIST: If you are at home and stuck
with your kid you might as well do something
fun and educational with them.
What I've done here is put together a super,
super fun science demonstration that is safe
to do at home with your kids and hopefully
all these ingredients you already have in
your pantry or your craft drawer or something
like that because I don't know about you,
but I get maxed out on screen time so I think
it's really fun to do something kinesthetic
with your hands.
And if you can learn something while you're
doing it you might as well have fun too.
Okay, this is called the bubble snake and
I'm going to explain first the ingredients
and then give you step-by-step instructions
on how to do this.
First things first is you need to get a small
plastic soda bottle or a water bottle.
I have these little ones in my garage because
I use them when I breathe fire but the bigger
soda bottles or water bottles work just as
well because what you're going to do with
it is actually just cut it off so you have
the top part of it but I'll get there in just
a second.
So, any size bottle will do.
You need food coloring.
I prefer the reds and the pinks when I'm doing
this outside but because of being on camera
I'm going to use greens and blues for you.
You're going to need a half cup of water,
a quarter cup of dish soap, a bowl to mix
your dish soap and water, a spoon, one rubber
band and then an old rag.
You can use a sock, you can use a rag, you
can use a towel, a tee shirt.
Anything will really work for this.
You just don't want something that's super,
super porous or super thick.
The first thing you're going to do is you're
going to take your plastic soda bottle or
water bottle and you're going to cut off the
bottom part.
You only want the top portion of your soda
bottle.
So a perfect one is going to look like this.
You're gong to see your top part here and
then it's cut off right there at the edge.
Then what you're going to do is take your
old rag and you're going to wrap it around
the edge of your soda bottle so that's where
your rubber band comes into play.
You're going to wrap the rubber band around
your towel just like this.
Two or three times should be absolutely plenty.
You just want to make sure that towel sticks
on here.
I did this once and the rubber band snapped
and the stuff went all over this actor's head
because I was doing it on camera.
It was an awesome day but the poor guy was
covered in food coloring.
Once you have this you're going to put it
off to the side and we're going to build our
little concoction over here.
In your bowl you need to have a quarter cup
of dish soap.
Any bubbles will do.
Bubble bath will work if you're keeping your
dish soap around for quarantine time which
I totally understand.
Then you've got a half cup of water so you're
going to add that into your dish soap.
Now you want to make sure that you stir this
together so completely stir.
And I would stir for at least 10 or 15 seconds.
I'm not going to do that for you here but
make sure you stir for a long time because
you want to make sure that your solution is
super bubbly.
You don't want to dip your bubble snake apparatus
into just water.
You want to make sure you have the soap as
well.
So then you're going to take this, flip it
upside down so that your towel is exposed
and then grab your food coloring.
Now the goal is to cover your entire patch
down here, the whole piece on this side.
Cover they entire thing with your food coloring.
I like to do stripes and zig-zags and patterns
with all types of different colors, but just
for the sake of time today I'm just going
to use a big green blob.
Not super attractive but it will work for
our purpose here.
Then what I'm going to do is I'm just going
to move my soap out of the way for a second
here.
Now is the fun part.
You're going to take your apparatus.
Now you're going to dunk it food coloring
side down into your dish soap water bowl.
When you pick it up let it drain.
You're going to see that the food coloring
comes off, totally normal.
But if you're type A like me and you don't
like lots of messes let it drain into the
bowl.
Now, for the fun part.
Once it stops draining you're going to go
from the side.
Take a deep breath and you blow.
And you make this incredible bubble snake.
And so what you're doing is you're exhaling
all of this gas that's in your lungs out so
there's nitrogen molecules, oxygen, carbon
dioxide, even some water in here.
If you can go outside but stay within your
little area six feet away from everybody,
you can let the wind actually carry this bubble
snake around and it is so fun.
I love, love, love it.
So what I love about this experiment is it's
something you can do at home with your kids.
It is completely safe.
There's nothing here that's dangerous at all.
No explosions or fire or anything, but you're
outside, you're engaged, you're having a good
time, you're outside, you're engaged, you're
having a good time, some family time, but
you're learning as well.
The kids might ask you what are the molecules
that are in your exhale and you can talk about
how you exhale carbon dioxide and oxygen and
nitrogen.
I just think it's so fun to spend some time
with the family and do some science as well.
So, if you're looking for other experiments
you can check out my Big Book of Experiments
which has 25 experiments that you can do with
things that are at home hopefully in your
kitchen right now.
