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Experimentals: Make your own rocket fuel...!?!

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Man and woman watch liquid gush upwards from drink bottle
Experimentals: Make your own rocket fuel...!?!

SUBJECTS:  Science

YEARS:  7–8


You know what happens when the pressure in a bottle reaches extreme levels: KABOOM!

Discover with Ruben and Bernie how mixing together some everyday household chemicals can fuel a fizzy fountain or a model rocket, with spectacular results.

This science experiment is chemistry in motion.


Things to think about

  1. 1.If you shake up a bottle of lemonade, where does the gas come from that fizzes it out everywhere when you open it? What is the gas? How is it made?
  2. 2.When Bernie drops the mints into the lemonade, where does she tell us the bubbles come from? What can you see in the bottle when vinegar and baking soda are mixed together?
  3. 3.Investigate the chemical properties of mints, lemonade, baking soda and vinegar. Do they have anything in common? Find out where the carbon dioxide gas comes from when a mint is dropped into lemonade. Does the carbon dioxide released when baking soda and vinegar are mixed come from the same place? How would you test to see if there had been a chemical change after each reaction? Energy appears in many forms: movement/kinetic energy, potential energy, chemical energy, heat energy and sound energy, to name a few.What energy transfers can you see taking place in the rocket? Draw and label a diagram to track the transfer of energy to explain why the rocket flies.
  4. 4.Find out what other household products have the same properties as vinegar and baking soda. What do you think would happen if you mixed these other similar chemicals together? Could they propel the rocket?



Date of broadcast: 24 Jun 2007


Copyright

Metadata © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia Ltd 2012 (except where otherwise indicated). Digital content © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). Video © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). All images copyright their respective owners. Text © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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