Sodium Alginate Worms
Autopause
Materials
1 Bottle of Sodium Alginate
4 Bottles of Food Coloring
1 Clear Dish
1 Pipette
2 Plastic Cups
1 Plunger
Calcium Lactate Gluconate
Instructions
STEP 1
Pull out the bag with the big bottle in it. Place everything around the white mat and put the bag back in your box.
STEP 2
Place the square clear dish in the middle of the mat. Then, pour half of the sodium alginate into the container using a zig-zag motion.
STEP 3
Add 3 drops of each color. Remember to leave some space between each color.
STEP 4
Place your pipette in the center of a color drop. While touching the pipette to the bottom, slowly move it away from the drop.
STEP 5
Repeat the steps above for the next color. Continue drawing with the remaining colors. Create fun shapes!
STEP 6
Try drawing lines through all of the colors or adding swirls. You can even add a few more drops of color to your dish.
STEP 7
Add 20 drops of blue food coloring to the bottle of sodium alginate and put the cap back on tight. Gently flip back and forth 20 times until the color is fully mixed.
STEP 8
Pour your colored sodium alginate liquid into one of the plastic cups. Then, fill the other cup ¾ of the way with water. Tip: cold water works best.
STEP 9
Empty the entire tube of Calcium Lactate Gluconate into the cup of water and begin mixing right away for 10 seconds until the powder is dissolved.
STEP 10
Using the syringe, pull back on the plunger and fill it with the blue sodium alginate until it reaches the “10” mark.
STEP 11
Hold the tip of your syringe above the water and push down on the plunger to ooze the blue liquid into the water. Wait 10 seconds, then reach in and pull out what you’ve made!
STEP 12
Fill the plunger again to the 10 mark and squeeze it into the cup of water. Try adding one drop at a time to create lots of little drops.
How It Works
This first part of our experiment works because the liquid is really thick. When a liquid is really thick we say it has a high viscosity, like honey. When it’s really thin, like water, it has a low viscosity. Viscosity is actually a scale with many things in-between, like chocolate syrup, which is somewhere between water and honey. We are working with Sodium Alginate, which comes from seaweed and makes liquid really, really thick.
Our second part of our experiment makes a chemical reaction, which is when two chemicals are mixed together and makes something new. For our worms, we mixed the chemical with our seaweed in it into our chemical with the calcium in it and it formed a gel. That gel is made out of Calcium Alginate and only forms where the two liquids touch. This material has some real-life uses, like making fruit juices into a jelly ball. It is also used to help wounds heal faster.
Our second part of our experiment makes a chemical reaction, which is when two chemicals are mixed together and makes something new. For our worms, we mixed the chemical with our seaweed in it into our chemical with the calcium in it and it formed a gel. That gel is made out of Calcium Alginate and only forms where the two liquids touch. This material has some real-life uses, like making fruit juices into a jelly ball. It is also used to help wounds heal faster.
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