She Blinded Me With Science pt 2 (Aliya's bday party)

Continuing on from the post of Part 1...While the kids were aiming plastic stoppers at various items in the street, I set out some snacks. Mostly fruit, veggies, pretzels, and of course, jelly (jello) in a petri dish.

 

After the kids were sugared up, it was time to move on to the fifth experiment, "Miracle Snow." The kids were impressed with this super-absorbing polymer. One teaspoon of "snow" absorbed 1/2 cup of water!

They decided to add food coloring to the snow. We suggested colors other than yellow, who wants yellow snow?? They had a good time playing around with it, and thankfully there were no snow fights!

The sixth experiment, "Elephant's Toothpaste," was one I was really excited about, but almost didn't happen. It requires high-strength hydrogen peroxide. Most websites suggested buying it at a beauty supply shop, because it's used for bleaching hair. So, I headed to Chaddys, aka Chadstones, the largest shopping mall in the southern hemisphere, and bought two liters of the stuff, and put it aside. 
   The night before, we did a run-through of the experiment after Aliya went to bed. I hadn't wanted to do it while she was around, because I wanted it to be a surprise. Well, I was suprised when I went to pour out the hydrogen peroxide and discovered it was a creamy-lotion!
   Given that it was late on a Friday night, I figured the odds of finding more hydrogen peroxide before the party were slim. I would have used the regular strength stuff from the chemist (pharmacy) but it was psychotically expensive, something like $8 for 8 oz, and we needed a fair bit. After rowing on Saturday morning, Andy stopped off at the Hairhouse Warehouse beauty supply place, hoping to buy some, but no luck. After some frantic googling, I found a suggestion to try a pool-supply shop. Andy made a call, and voila, we were in luck. He came back with a big jug of even higher concentration stuff, which was actually pretty potent. We decided to pre-fill the bottles for each child, minimizing their exposure to it. 
   When it was time for the experiment, the children were each given a bottle, to which they added a good squirt of dish soap and some food coloring. Next, they mixed up a small cup of warm water and yeast. They poured that mixture into the bottle:

The kids loved playing with the resulting foam, which was warm. They also observed the bottle was a bit warm, and saw a bit of steam, leading to a very brief discussion of exothermic reactions. Those college thermodynamics classes finally came in handy!

While we cleaned up, Andy took the kids outside for one more demonstration, the famous "Mentos and Diet Coke." In our case, we used Pepsi Max since it was on sale at the time :-) The official word is that any soda will work, but that diet versions tend to be less sticky, which is good since one child decided to stand underneath the soda fountain.
   I'd bought a Mentos Geyser Tube, which made it easy to load up seven or eight Mentos candies in a tube that attached to the soda bottle. You just needed to pull a long string to release them, and then stand back:

 As the party was almost over, the girls headed back inside for cake and ice cream. Here's the flask cake, made from two bundt cakes, a PVC tube, and lots of frosting.

It looked even cooler once we put some water and dry ice inside the tube.

Afterward, she opened her presents, the kids went home, and Andy and I collapsed! Aliya thanked us endlessly, and said it was the "best party evah" which made it all worth while.