Use hydrogen peroxide, dish soap and dry yeast to make a Jack-O-Lantern ooze beautiful green bubbles! (*Don’t forget the safety goggles. Adult supervision required)

Click here to watch the chemical reaction in action!

Ingredients:

-large bottle of 6, 10 or 12% hydrogen peroxide, or 20, 30 or 40 volume hydrogen peroxide clear developer (found at beauty supply shops or online.) * note: concentrated hydrogen peroxide can burn eyes and damage clothing

-Jack-O-lantern with top

-dish soap

-food coloring

-water

-dry yeast

-jar that will fit inside pumpkin

-Large rimmed baking sheet or tray to contain the mess

-safety goggles

Instructions:

1. Add a few tablespoons of water, 3 Tbsp. dish soap and a tsp. green food coloring to the jar. Mix well.
2. Put the pumpkin on the tray and the jar in the pumpkin. Carefully add 1 cup of hydrogen peroxide to the dish soap mixture in the jar. Stir to mix.
3. In a separate container, mix 3 teaspoons yeast with 1/4 cup warm (not hot) water. Mix well.
4. To start the chemical reaction, quickly pour all of the yeast mixture into the hydrogen peroxide and immediately put the top on the pumpkin.
5. Watch the chemical reaction happen.

The Science Behind the Fun

A chemical scissors (an enzyme called catalase) in the yeast breaks hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) into water (H20) and Oxygen (O), making lots of bubbles in the soap. The reaction feels warms because it releases energy. Reactions that give off heat are called exothermic reactions.

If you’ve ever seen the X-Files, you know that foaming green alien blood is pretty scary.

It’s simple to use kitchen table chemistry to mix up your own batch of green alien blood with corn syrup, green food coloring, water and baking soda.

Just add vinegar (tell your friends it’s water) to make it foam.

Mix together:

2 Tbs corn syrup

1 tsp baking soda

green food coloring

1/2 tsp water

When you want to make your slime foam, add a few tsp of vinegar.

You could make the same thing with red food coloring and call it vampire blood!

The Science Behind the Fun: When you add baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) to vinegar (acetic acid), there’s a chemical reaction that creates carbon dioxide gas bubbles! 

Experiment created by Liz Heinecke at KitchenPantryScientist.com

We supersized the foaming slime experiment from Outdoor Science Lab for Kids to make a giant foaming slime volcano. And it was awesome!