June 2017:
Have you ever laid out in the summertime looking up in the sky at the clouds and imagined what animal shape the cloud has made? What is a cloud and can I make one?
Materials:
2 L empty transparent plastic bottle with a lid
matches
warm water
Warning! When using matches make su...
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Articles
May 2017:
What is a bath bomb and why does it fizz when it goes into water? A bath bomb is a solid, powdery substance which can take many shapes. Here is one pictured below.
As it's submerged in water, it bubbles. This is the result of the release of CO2 also known as carbon dioxide. This is the...
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Report of Council Meeting held in the Spring of 2017
by BARBARA MORIARTY, Councilor
The 253rd National Meeting of the ACS was held in San Francisco, CA, from April 1 – 6, 2017. The theme of this meeting was “Advanced Materials, Technologies, Systems and Processes.” The Chicago se...
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March 2017:
As a kid doing dishes (does anyone do those anymore?), I was always fascinated when I had a glass filled with water and if you put a small plate on top of it and tipped it over, the water would stay in the glass. Back then it never made sense to me how this happened.
Materials:
- Pa...
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February 2016:
Here’s the challenge: Fill a glass with water as full as you can without it spilling over. How many paperclips do you think you can add before the water spills over the rim of the glass?
Materials:
- Box of paper clips or a lot of pennies- Drinking glass- Dishwashing soap
...
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January 2017:
Have you ever seen a can crushed? How about one that has been ripped apart? Crushing an aluminum can may not take that much strength but ripping one apart would be very difficult to do. That is unless you’ve had a little chemical help.
Materials:
Copper Sulfate (can be fou...
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December 2016:
After taking last month off of writing ChemShorts for Kids, I thought I’d add another little trick from the Illinois State Fair that Frank Salter shared with many attendees.
Materials:
Coke bottle (or any bottle that narrows to the top but has a pronounced neck)
A pen ca...
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October 2016:
I just got back from the Illinois State Fair where the ACS had their tent set up. Frank Salter did many of the demonstrations at the fair and shared this one with me. Apparently back during the Vietnam Conflict, our troops did not always have access to clean, pathogen free water. To...
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REPORT OF COUNCIL MEETING IN PHILADELPHIA
by Barbara Moriarty, Councilor
The 252nd National Meeting of the ACS was held in Philadelphia, PA, from August 21 – 25, 2015. The theme of this meeting was “Chemistry for the People, by the People and with the People” The Chicago Se...
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September 2016:
Have you noticed that packing peanuts look different? Sometimes they are different colors (but that’s just because they add some color to the material in the peanut). The ones that are really different exist because they are made out of two very different materials. The orig...
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