Spooky Science of Halloween
Science Standards Addressed:
- Know that when substances are combined they may create a new substance with different properties (Monster Drool, Gross Worms).
- Know that matter is composed of parts too small to be seen with the naked eye (Monster Drool, Gross Worms).
- Describe the characteristics of the 3 states of matter (Boo Bubbles and Crystal Bubble).
Plus we snuck in some speaking and listening standards like asking questions, expressing ideas, following multi-step directions, and participating in discussions.
10 minutes
As the children arrived we played songs like Ghostbusters, Monster Mash, and Spooky.
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| Spooky Science Snack: for the color alone we had blackberries and orange carrots. |
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| We also made a Spooky Halloween punch which contained: walrus pee (apple juice), nuclear waste (pineapple juice), blended beetles (grape juice) and bats blood (cranberry juice). Then we added some glow sticks and some dry ice that carbonates the drink with the carbon dioxide gas that is sublimating from the dry ice. - bubbling and burping. |
The scary looking guys in the suits threatened that if we didn’t include this,… they would be back. Dry ice must be handled with caution. It is -110 degrees Fahrenheit. It must be handled using gloves or tongs. It will cause severe burns if it comes in contact with your skin.
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| Georgie and the Noisy Ghost, by Robert Bright. |
It is out of print now, but you can find plenty of cheap used copies with a quick Internet search.
In this story, Georgie is a gentle ghost who lives peacefully and quietly with the Whittaker family. When Georgie goes on vacation with his family, he meets Captain Hooper – a sad and noisy ghost. He moans loudly because in life he never won a medal and he still wants one. His noise scared the family. The captain became a hero when the family fell asleep in their boat with a storm on the way. He moaned loudly and woke them up. He saved the day, so Georgie gave him a medal!
Drooling Jack
We took a cheap department store decorative jack-o-lantern (the kind with a light bulb in the back which we removed) and cut a hole in the top. This allowed us to insert a towel (to soak up water) and a 16 oz plastic cup filled with hot water. Using gloves we placed a piece of dry ice into the hot water. The kids screamed with delight as the cloud of carbon dioxide gas and water vapor poured out of the mouth of the jack-o-lantern.
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| Then we kicked it up a notch. We added some liquid dish detergent, and the cloud of CO2 and water vapor turned into an eruption of “smoke-filled” bubbles! |
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| We couldn’t afford to buy and mangle that many jack-o-lanterns, but we wanted them to experience this for themselves, so we used tall graduated cylinders in place of the jack-o-lanterns. |
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| We added hot water, then added a glow stick to make it even cooler. The kids used gloves to put their own dry ice in and then add the soap to see a column of bubbles crawl out over the top! |
20 minutes
Ghost Bubbles You think that was cool? We do too! But we kicked it up another 10 notches with this one. We used Steve Spangler’s dry ice smoke bubble generator to create fog-filled bubbles that you can hold in your hands.
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| We filled the jar half full with hot water and dropped some chunks of dry ice into the jar. |
With a little shake, we could get the bubbles to rest perfectly in the gloved hands of the kids.
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| They could bounce them in their hands, play catch with them, and best of all pop them and see the cloud of fog fall. |
20 minutes
Crystal Bubble We saved the most impressive dry ice demo for last – the world's coolest crystal ball. First we cut a strip of cloth about one inch wide ay 18 inches long. We soaked the strip in a solution if liquid dish detergent and rang out the excess. We filled a large bowl with a smooth rim half full with warm water and dropped in some dry ice. We used the strip of cloth to create a soap film on the rim of the bucket by drawing the strip repeatedly across the rim until the soap film formed.
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| It took some practice and patience, but when we successfully drew the film all the way across the bowl, what looks like a crystal ball filled with fog appeared. |
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| Double, double toil and trouble Fire burn, and cauldron bubble. |
Monster Drool
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| We mixed 2 ounces of the slime solution (poly vinyl alcohol – PVA) with a spoonful of the cross-linking (borax) solution into the handy dandy shaker cup and did the Shake Shake Shake, Shake Shake Shake, Shake your Monster Drool dance. |
We told them that all matter is made up of things to small to see with our eyes – atoms and molecules. In most liquids single molecules (monomers) bounce around – not connected to each other. These liquids flow easy (little viscosity) aren’t slimey. In this case, monomers are linked together in long chains – polymers.
We showed the kids a model we made. It is a pile of chains of various lengths. We explain that these chains are a little like polymers. If we grab one, but single chain comes loose. Then we add a bunch of magnets and mix everything up. Then we show the kids that NOW if we grab a chain, we get a blob of chains all stuck together. They have been CROSS-LINKED – chemically – not magnetically.
Gross Worms
Finally, we whipped up a batch of worms. In a similar demonstration of cross-linking, we squeezed squirts of worm goo into the worm-goo activator (borax) solution. The Worm Goo is a polymer, and the Activator, cross links the solution so that the goo immediately changes from a liquid to a solid!  |
| At this point, we weren’t talking about Chemistry anymore – we were just having fun! Check out the video of our Family Science Night! |
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