Melissa: 00:09

Hey. I'm Melissa.

Jam: 00:11

I'm Jam.

Melissa: 00:11

And I'm a chemist.

Jam: 00:13

And I'm not.

Melissa: 00:13

And welcome to chemistry for your life.

Jam: 00:15

The podcast helps you understand and also do chemistry in your everyday life.

Melissa: 00:20

Okay, Jim. I gave you an assignment for an experiment this morning.

Jam: 00:24

Yes. You did.

Melissa: 00:25

Can you tell me about it?

Jam: 00:27

Yes. He gave me the instructions, and I decided to just do whatever I wanted. And I just did my own thing.

Melissa: 00:33

And what was that? What did you do that was whatever you wanted?

Jam: 00:36

So you told me to get some household items.

Melissa: 00:39

Right. Honey. Mhmm.

Jam: 00:42

Corn syrup, which I didn't have exactly that, but I had maple Flavored syrup, which is corn syrup with maple flavoring in

Melissa: 00:48

it. Right.

Jam: 00:50

Dish soap.

Melissa: 00:51

Mhmm.

Jam: 00:52

Vegetable oil.

Melissa: 00:54

Mhmm.

Jam: 00:54

Water and rubbing alcohol.

Melissa: 00:57

Right.

Jam: 00:58

And then you told me to put this is also the things that you can do at home while you're following along. You told me to put those things in a clear container of some kind, glass or a bottle with the top cut off, And to put a at a layer of those substances in that order Right. From beginning to end in that container and see what happened. And then you'd also told me to drop some objects in there.

Melissa: 01:29

That's right. I did.

Jam: 01:30

So that is what I did.

Melissa: 01:32

Okay. So when you poured those things in on top of each other, what happened?

Jam: 01:37

The the honey was the first one I poured in, and it stayed at the bottom, which kinda makes sense. I thought that might happen with it being so thick. And then the maple syrup, there are slightly different brown colors, but I could tell that they stayed separated and that the corn syrup, maple syrup was on top of it.

Melissa: 01:55

Mhmm.

Jam: 01:55

In the dish soap I had, Unfortunately, it was orange, so it was a little similar to the color of the other stuff,

Melissa: 02:02

which be nice if it was blue, like, Dawn dish soap or whatever, but that's okay.

Jam: 02:06

We just finished a yellow thing of dish soap, so that would have been perfect if I saw some of that. But I guess we'll tell the difference, And hope that you guys in the video can see a little bit of the difference too. And that's set on top of that one. And then I did when I did the vegetable oil, it also went on top. So so far, everything was staying on top.

Jam: 02:27

Mhmm.

Melissa: 02:28

And

Jam: 02:28

then the water, I had put a little bit of blue food coloring in to make it a little bit easier to see, and it went under the oil

Melissa: 02:37

Mhmm.

Jam: 02:37

And started mingling with the soap a little bit. At first, there were some suds and stuff, actually. So it kinda got a little muddled there, but Alcohol was one of the harder ones to see, I think. I think it's mostly sitting on top, but I couldn't fully tell.

Melissa: 03:02

Because it was clear? Mhmm.

Jam: 03:03

Because it was clear. I think it actually ended up mixing with the water a little bit. If if some of it got below the oil, I think it mixed with the water.

Melissa: 03:10

Okay. So I think I maybe 1 one of us mixed some stuff up. I think the water was supposed to go in before the vegetable oil, But it's not the end of the world. Uh-oh. It doesn't really matter because what's fun about science is you get to see.

Melissa: 03:28

Did they send it in that order?

Jam: 03:29

Yeah. I actually put the things in the order. Like, I put the bottles or whatever in the order. Mhmm. But somehow, some point, maybe when I added the food coloring to that water, it got out of order.

Jam: 03:40

Like, I had them Well lined up.

Melissa: 03:42

Because it actually still shows the property that I wanted to show.

Jam: 03:47

Nice.

Melissa: 03:47

And it demonstrates how you can kinda mix this experiment. Mix it up literally and figuratively. Yeah. So this experiment is all about density. Mhmm.

Melissa: 04:01

Density, I'm sure most people know, but it's mass per volume. So usually, we do grams per milliliter or something along those lines. So is it how heavy is this based on how much you have of the liquid? And I gave you the list in an order of increasing density. So you put The most ends on the bottom and the least ends on top, and it forms this nice layer.

Melissa: 04:25

If you have the light corn syrup that's clear, it looks really cool Yeah. With the brown from the honey and the clear corn syrup and then a different color dish soap and then water and vegetable oil and rubbing alcohol, and you can put Food coloring in the water or the rubbing alcohol or both.

Jam: 04:41

Yeah. You guys could learn from my my experience of having things that looked pretty similar in color. If you don't if you do have the opportunity to not Have it be like that? Then you can avoid that.

Melissa: 04:50

So you can pour them in, and the liquids will sit 1 on top of the other, Which I think for us adults is pretty intuitive. You know that if you put water and oil together, they're not gonna mix, and one's gonna sit on top of the other. Mhmm. But kids Don't know that. Kids don't cook or play with stuff as much as we do, so that could be fun just that.

Melissa: 05:09

Making a cool column of layered stuff By itself is really fun for kids. They get to see the density. Now we've talked about this a lot, but a thing that really helps in demonstrations or experiments for kids to become invested is for them to make predictions. So if I were you, I would Ask them what they think is gonna happen if you pour all these in. And this is where it gets customizable.

Melissa: 05:36

So you can say, what do you think is gonna happen if we pour these in and put them in in the order of most dense to less dense.

Jam: 05:42

Mhmm.

Melissa: 05:43

And then you can ask, what do you think is gonna happen if we pour them in the opposite way?

Jam: 05:47

Mhmm.

Melissa: 05:48

And let them see that if you want. You can ask them, what do you think is gonna happen if we mix it all up? And then try it out. But the important thing is to ask them, what do you think is Gonna happen. Yeah.

Melissa: 06:01

That's a a great way to get them invested. And you can let them say, Do you wanna mix it all up and see if maybe they have that idea. What happens if you mix these up? But I'm kind of glad, Jim, that you switched the order around because What that shows you is density remains the same between water and vegetable oil. The water will go down.

Jam: 06:23

Mhmm.

Melissa: 06:23

But The dish soap is the emulsifier. We learned about how soap can bring oil and water together, so you saw a little bit of that probably.

Jam: 06:31

Yeah. I did. Yeah.

Melissa: 06:33

So there are some things that can happen, some chemical interactions that can happen if you mix everything all up. So that's why this experiment is pretty fun, and you can do a lot of stuff with it even though it's very simple.

Jam: 06:44

Mhmm.

Melissa: 06:46

And if you have older kids, maybe you can tell them, Why don't you try to make this with as clean lines as possible? And they might have fun trying to make a really beautiful, tall, skinny something. If you have maybe A champagne glass or a really thin vase.

Jam: 07:02

Mhmm. It

Melissa: 07:02

could look really pretty in that. You can see all the layers really well in something like that that's tall and Guinea.

Jam: 07:07

Yeah. Dang. That'd be cool. Yeah. That that would definitely I think some of those are pretty intuitive to us, but I do I did think, You definitely told me this order on purpose, but off the top of my head, I'm not sure that I would know which one would be on top with, like, the alcohol for instance.

Jam: 07:25

Like, Mhmm. Haven't really mixed rubbing alcohol with stuff, so it was kind of unknown to me what it would do. I assume from being last and less than it might be the least Dense of anything, but I didn't know that from experience. So that was kinda interesting.

Melissa: 07:39

And you can ask you can do other things for sure. You can ask kids, what do you think if you just mix the oil and water? What if we added dish soap? And then you'll see a nice amau should just between those 3 things. You know, you can really It doesn't matter what you have.

Melissa: 07:52

You can do this with any amount of stuff you have on hand or just 1 or 2 things. And you can also ask kids to find other liquids to mix in there.

Jam: 08:02

Mhmm.

Melissa: 08:03

What do you think will happen if we add laundry detergent instead of dish soap? What do you think will happen if we add milk? You know, let them say, what if we try this and go for it? That's fun for kids and important and good for them to Wonder and try. Mhmm.

Melissa: 08:19

And we wanna encourage that natural curiosity.

Jam: 08:23

It kinda reminded me of when I make some coffee for my wife, I like to have the milk and coffee. I have to put the, milk in first and then the coffee, And it kinda looks cool. I mean, it actually looks cool either way, honestly, but if you just don't mix it and let it kind of be separate, it looks pretty cool. And if you froth milk, the froth will stay on top A lot of times Yeah. Even if the rest of the milk starts to settle at the bottom.

Jam: 08:47

So it's just

Melissa: 08:48

kinda love that. Yeah. I love the look of a If a dark coffee mixing with milk, you know, sometimes they'll put that as cool pictures of coffee shops. I love that. Yeah.

Melissa: 08:57

Okay. Then I asked you to do a second phase of this experiment. Mhmm. You can do what you want with this. You can stop at the 1st part and then save it for the next day, Experiment part 2 for tomorrow to kind of spread out the amount of time you get out of this.

Melissa: 09:14

You can just Do the next part with oil and water. I've seen that done before. You can use the whole column. You can do whatever you want with this. But will you talk about what you did next?

Jam: 09:27

Yes. So I took something I could quickly find to drop in were a somewhat long and slightly heavier screw than than some. And then I also grabbed The smallest paper clip I could find. Thinking that maybe there'd be some difference for those 2 things. And I couldn't find a it's just, like, maybe a marble or a thumbtack.

Jam: 09:50

I Wasn't able to find things like that quickly. But, when I dropped the screw in, it being pretty solid and heavy, It dropped down really quickly. And then once it hit the honey and, probably right around the corn syrup and the honey area, it slowed down a lot. And then Mhmm. For the Honey, it did sink all the way to the bottom, but it slowed down a ton.

Jam: 10:14

It was just like this. It's quickly moved through the 1st several layers and then slowed down a lot, and it kinda looked cool. Had a little trail behind it as it fell. And then the paper clip, Similar deal, but it took a lot longer, for it to get through that corn syrup and honey section, but ultimately did fall all the way through.

Melissa: 10:35

So I think that's a good example. Well, actually, I'll say that. Jim, did that seem familiar to you at all? That experiment?

Jam: 10:46

Seem familiar.

Melissa: 10:50

You took general chemistry for nonmajors at University of North Texas, and that is one of the experiments that we did in that class.

Jam: 10:59

I don't know. I'm just kidding. I I don't remember that one. I remember a few different ones that we did, but for some reason, that one Doesn't ring a bell for me, but I easily do that

Melissa: 11:11

one, obviously. There's other things that come into play, but that experiment allows you to approximate the density of different objects. Obviously, there's we did an episode where we talked about how paper clips can sit on top of water due to surface tension and surface area and all of that. So there's other stuff at play, but that's a fun way to show kids the relative density of a solid object and liquids. Mhmm.

Melissa: 11:35

And it's just fun for kids to drop stuff in. You can get them to put their little Lego figurines in there. You can get them to get their toys that are Obviously, safe to get wet. Don't put a plush animal or anything in there. Mhmm.

Melissa: 11:47

And let them guess which layer it's gonna be in. Mhmm. If You wanna let this experiment go longer, or if you have younger kids, it's easy to just do it with oil and water. And you can use a matchstick that'll probably float up higher. Try to, On purpose, gather things that are lighter and things that are heavier that you know will sink versus float, and Let them guess where it's gonna end up, and then drop it in there.

Melissa: 12:13

And this provides hours. That's fine. Maybe at least an hour Have fun. And I recommend either trying to put the heavier things in first that you suspect are gonna be heavier. Because if you have something tall and skinny, they can kinda clash.

Melissa: 12:31

Or if you're using a pickle jar or something that's wider, try to put them in at different areas of the jar. But you can even use something like a bottle cap and put it in upside down to where it'll fill up and sink or right side up to where it'll maybe sit on top more so that you have a lot of options for things you can do and play with and see what happens and Let your kids really wonder and try and be curious and make guesses because that is encouraging that scientific mindset at a really young age to explore and make scientific Hypotheses in a much more casual way

Jam: 13:12

Yeah.

Melissa: 13:13

That really is a good way to foster that sense of a scientific mind at a very young age. And I think this is a good experiment for a lot of different ages, maybe all the way up into high school. Yeah. Maybe some teenagers are too cool, but definitely, you can you can adapt this for younger and older for sure.

Jam: 13:33

Yeah.

Melissa: 13:36

So that's it. That's our household experiment for the week.

Jam: 13:40

Dana, it was definitely fun. And must be curious to think about some other like, you're talking about maybe thinking of some other different liquids and ones I might not really know if I know which one's more dense or less. You know what I mean?

Melissa: 13:57

So That's really fun.

Jam: 14:00

Like, what if I got, like, a soda If she doesn't have, like, corn syrup in it and something else. Like, I wonder what would happen there.

Melissa: 14:05

And it's bubbly.

Jam: 14:06

And it's bubbly.

Melissa: 14:07

So does that impact the density overall?

Jam: 14:09

Who knows what could happen?

Melissa: 14:11

You could do a flat soda and a bubbly soda.

Jam: 14:16

Interesting.

Melissa: 14:17

See?

Jam: 14:17

Yeah.

Melissa: 14:18

There you go. You're you're getting that wondering going. That's good for you. It's good for all ages, even grown ups. Well, thanks for coming and doing that experiment, Jam.

Melissa: 14:29

I always really enjoy these and enjoy imagining and hearing from people who talk about their kids doing the experiment. So let us know if you do them and what your kids think.

Jam: 14:39

Absolutely. Thanks for teaching us. And, guys, if you haven't seen the video of me trying this out, you can check it out on our Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, and follow along while you do your own experiment. This episode of Chemistry For Your Life was created by Melissa Coleenney and Jam Robinson. I'm glad to give a special thanks to E Robinson who reviewed this episode.