Elephant Toothpaste! 🐘 🪥

Wow, I was not expecting another day of experiment but my enthusiastic students actually went to buy Hydrogen Peroxide for the Elephant Toothpaste Experiment!

So of course I obliged and will not resist the curiosity of learning. Today we happily conducted the Elephant Toothpaste Experiment and it was a huge success!

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Materials and Apparatus:
🧪 hydrogen peroxide
🧪dish detergent or dish soap
🧪 instant dry yeast
🧪 warm water
🧪 empty plastic bottle
🧪 teaspoon to stir
🧪 food colouring (optional)

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Here is how we did it.

Mix the active yeast in warm water. It gave a fragrant smell. Make sure do not mix it with hot water as it will kill of the yeast.

Pour the hydrogen peroxide carefully into the cup or bottle. Pour in about half a cup.

Add dish detergent about 3 pumps into the hydrogen peroxide.

Add some food colouring if you have. These two took a looooooong time to choose the colour they want. Finally they went with orange.

Finally, pour in the yeast-water mixture.

VOILA!!!

Observe the eruption!

We waited for a while to feel the foam as this is an exothermic reaction, hence there will be some heat felt.

EXOTHERMIC REACTION IS A CHEMICAL REACTION THAT RELEASES HEAT TO THE SURROUNDING.

Look at the happy faces of a successful experiment!

Last but not least, CLEANING UP!

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Explanation
This experiment is called an elephant Toothpaste because it looks like Toothpaste fit for the Elephant as it can grow till quite big.

The principle behind this experiment is easy. Hydrogen Peroxide whis is H2O2 breaks down to water H2O and also O2 as it is exposed to light and not kept in a dark bottle. To help this happen faster as the process is usually slow, yeast functions as the catalyst as it contains catalase. Oxygen gas which form bubbles tend to escape and pop from the liquid. To trap that, dish detergent is added so that a surface tension is created for the bubbles of it to become foamy.

Doesn't it look like a squeeze from a giant toothpaste big enough for an elephant?

That was fun! After that, my students gladly go back to our class to revise their science with me. THAT'S ALL FROM US TODAY!