Open evening, chemistry without using gas
- Thread starter Sci-nymph
- Start date
and looks unlikely to be sorted for open evening so i'm looking for ideas of what to do for chemistry that don't involve gas/bunsens
Emil Tac 2
Roller of Sleeves
Can do sugar cube flame tests. CLEAPSS has a document on it.
Reversible blue bottle demo usually lasts a while. I make a few just in case.
Reversible blue bottle demo usually lasts a while. I make a few just in case.
Sort the equipment is one we do that they can get their hands on and try, precipitate reactions with 6th form, red cabbage indicator (made up before hand) and a variety of household items for pH testing, rainbow fizz in a burette and then with anhydrous sodium carbonate and HCl in boiling tubes
What is this please? We need more hands-on activities...
We do red cabbage - students rip the leaves (no need for knives) and cover with boiling water from a kettle. You can either strain this or just pipette the liquid from around the leaves. Either use a spotting tile or test tubes to put the indicator in and then add the acids or alkalis. I did see a thing on FB where someone had pipetted the indicator onto filter paper and then added the acids and alkalis to make pretty spots (they had cut out a triangle from the filter paper, which became a mouth, and added the triangle to the side of the filter paper to make a tail, added an eye and voila a fish!). For rainbow fizz, I have a test tube pre-seeded with some solid sodium carbonate (warning). The students add a drop of UI, then two squirts of 0.1M sodium carbonate and then two squirts of 0.4M hydrochloric acid. With this method, I found you consistently got a rainbow with little effort (if you don't get red at the top, another squirt of HCl would do it).
Just get out a load of basic equipment, like Bunsens, tripods, gauzes, some glassware, measuring cylinder etc and then make up some labels and all they have to do is match the label to the equipment. Boiling and test tubes always get them confuzzled.
The red cabbage is hands on too - just make some up, stick it in a beaker, a range of solutions made up from household things like toothpaste, shower gel, lemonade, vinegar and then some spotting tiles. Easy wash up and they can make pretty colours!