It's A Gas!

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Visitors mix water and sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) in a large flask. They then add citric acid to the mixture and stopper the flask. The resulting reaction creates carbon dioxide gas. The gas passes through the tubing into a small flask filled with blue water and displaces the water into a beaker. Visitors observe a chemical reaction with a gas as a product. They infer that a gas takes up space and can exert pressure, whether or not it is visible. [Activity is publicly available through a web crawler capture on Archive.org.]

Quick Guide

Preparation Time:
30 to 45 minutes
Learning Time:
Under 5 minutes
Estimated Materials Cost:
$1 - $5 per group of students
Age Range:
Ages 6 - adult
Resource Types:
Activity, Experiment/Lab Activity
Language:
English

Materials List (per group of students)

  • One 500-ml Erlenmeyer flask (narrow mouth) with a tightly fitting rubber stopper with one hole
  • One 250-ml Erlenmeyer flask with a tightly fitting rubber stopper with two holes
  • Stopper/tubing apparatus to connect the flasks
  • Three pieces of glass tubing (each 1½-in. long), to fit tightly through the three holes in the rubber stoppers
  • 3 ft of plastic tubing (A) the same diameter as the glass tubing
  • 5 in. of plastic tubing (B) to use as joints connecting the glass and the long plastic tubing
  • One 400-ml beaker
  • One 100-ml graduated cylinder
  • One 250-ml squeeze bottle
  • One 500-ml bottle
  • Blue food coloring
  • Two small jars with lids (about 200-cc size)
  • Two ½-tsp measures
  • Baking soda (two 4-lb boxes)
  • Citric acid (crystalline)—enough for about 1000 g per day during peak times
  • One 100-ml beaker (optional)
  • One votive candle, matches (optional)

Keywords

Subjects

  • Engineering and Technology
    • Engineering
      • Chemical Engineering
    • Technology
  • Physical Sciences
    • Chemistry
      • Chemical Reactions
    • States of Matter
      • Solids
      • Liquids
      • Gases
      • Changes of Phase
    • Structure and Properties of Matter
  • Life Sciences
    • Human Body
  • The Nature of Science
    • Science and Society
  • The Nature of Technology
    • Technology and Society
      • Technology and the Environment

Audience

To use this activity, learners need to:

  • see
  • read

Learning styles supported:

  • Involves hands-on or lab activities

Other

Access Rights:

  • Free access

By:

Rights:

Funding Source:

  • National Science Foundation