WEST MICHIGAN — Baking soda and vinegar are everyday products that we have in our households, but they can also be active ingredients in learning how carbon dioxide is formed! Combing baking soda, vinegar, and warm water can help people of all ages learn about our greenhouse gases.
Meteorologist Haleigh Vaughn visited Mr. Ablao and Mrs. Salvatore's 6th-grade science classrooms to illustrate this experiment with students. We're calling this one ... exploding lunch bag! You can watch the video above to see how it went.
Looking to try this at home? Here is what you'll need:
1. Sandwich bag
2. Baking soda
3. Vinegar
4. Warm water
5. Measuring cups or spoon
6. Tissue
Here are the steps:
Step 1: Go outside, to the kitchen sink, or a location where you can easily clean up the spillage
Step 2: Open a sandwich bag
Step 3: Put 1/4 Cup of warm water into the sandwich bag
Step 4: Add 1/2 Cup of vinegar into the sandwich bag
Step 5: Take a tissue and place 3 teaspoons of baking soda on it and fold it up
Step 6: Zip the sandwich bag closed but leave one corner open enough to fit the tissue full of baking soda in
Step 7: Work fast! Drop the tissue with baking soda in the sandwich bag and close the bag
Step 8: Sit back and watch the bag slowly expand ... and then explode!
You might be wondering ... what caused the bag to explode and what is happening here? Well, it's a simple chemical reaction happening inside the sandwich bag between the vinegar (our acid) and the baking soda (our base). Combining these two creates carbon dioxide (a gas) to be released. Once the bag can no longer hold the capacity of all ingredients and the gas, it will explode!
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a greenhouse gas is that occurs naturally and is harmless in small amounts. However, carbon dioxide in large amounts can have a negative effect. The sun naturally heats up our Earth. When the sun sets, heat naturally wants to rise back toward space. Greenhouse gases form to keep the heat from escaping Earth completely. We need greenhouse gases to keep us warm! However, too much of anything is often a bad thing. An excess of greenhouse gases traps heat on Earth, which leads to our Earth overheating and it can be harmful. This is often discussed as global warming.
Excess carbon dioxide (CO2) is often developed in our atmosphere from burning fossil fuels.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is actually one of the most important greenhouse gases because plants use it to produce carbohydrates during photosynthesis. Since humans and animals depend greatly on plants as food sources, carbon dioxide is a critical piece of our survival.
If you want to see carbon dioxide development in front of your eyes, try the experiment above!