Learned Something This Weekend

W e went to the Science Centre this weekend because our kids love it...and me too! Anyway, there was a demo on fire. In one experiment, the guy took a wad of paper and did the control with just burning it by itself. Then he submerged it into one of three beakers full of clear liquids in front of him. Lit it again and asked us to guess since it burned brighter and more intensely. It turned out to be rubbing alcohol. The next one didn't burn at all and turned out to be water. Then he asked for paper money. Someone gave him a 5 dollar bill and he submerged it into the middle beaker. He lit it on fire. We all gasped, of course, as it lit up. Then it went out on its own and the five was unharmed. Very cool. Nobody could guess what the middle beaker contained. It turned out to be half water and half rubbing alcohol. I learned something new! That was one of the coolest experiments I have ever seen. Who knew?! It was so simple.

There was another one he did with metal salts and methanol. He put 4 different metal salts on little dishes and then doused them all with methanol and put a trail of it across the table leading up to the dishes. First he did the control with just the methanol to show us what color it burned. Then he lit the table and a trail of blue fire ignited the metal salts and they all burned a different, very vibrant color. There was fuschia, orange, yellow and green. I don't remember the others, but the green was copper. That was a fun one and my boys loved it. He went on to tell us the science behind fireworks using the metal salts. It was so neat and I learned something new!

I can't wait to go there again!