Class Science Project

I'm so excited to see so many of you are going to enter the science fair.
Here's the project we did in class last week, which was tons of fun.
It was an example of how to use the scientific method more than anything.
We pretty much knew the answer to our question before we began.



Question: If you eat Pop Rocks & soda will you explode? (Lots of parents in the 80s thought so! So many that the Pop Rocks company even started a hot line for them to call!)

Hypothesis: No, probably not, because carbon dioxide (an active ingredient in both) is safe.

Procedure: We wanted to see how putting the two together would react before we combined them in our mouths.

So first we got a funnel and put a balloon on the bottom of it & poured the Pop Rocks in the funnel to fill up the balloon. We used a whole package for each group.


Then we put the balloon on the top of a soda bottle, and poured the rocks from the balloon into the soda. This inflated the balloons, slowly.



Observation: They didn't get huge, but some got bigger than others. I think those groups may have shaken their soda. The smallest yellow balloon had a hole in it we discovered later.

Then it was time to try it ourselves. Everyone got a handful of Pop Rocks and a small cup of soda (We borrowed some swish cups from the nurse.) Before putting them all in our mouths we looked at them through a magnifying glass. You could see the carbon dioxide bubbles in the Pop Rocks! (That's what makes them pop by the way, the pressurized CO2 in the candy is released when you put it in your mouth. There's over 600 PSI in each one!)

Conclusion: Putting Pop Rocks and soda in your mouth at the same time does NOT make you explode... but it is pretty funny. Especially when you teacher does it with a whole bag, and you make her laugh and she spits Pop Rocks & soda ALL OVER the place!