VOLCANO EXPERIMENT

Author: Shelly Cummings <gcummings@arlington.net>

TEACHER NOTE: Not my ideas, just passing them on:

			The Volcano

  Materials: 
	soda or liter bottle 
	baking pan 
	moist soil
	1 T. baking soda
	1 cup vinegar
	red food coloring

  Process: 
	1) Place the baking pan on the grass, and set the soda bottle in 
	the center of the pan.
	
	2) Mound and shape the most soil around the bottle to form a
	mountain. Bring the soil right up to the top of the bottle's
	opening but don't get soil in the bottle.

	3) Pour 1 T. baking soda into the bottle.

	4) Color 1 cup vinegar with the red food coloring.

	5) Pour the colored vinegar into the bottle. Stand back and watch 
	red form spray out the top and down the mountain of dirt, like 
	lava from a volcano.

	Make a volcano Use a 35 mm tube used to hold film.  Smooth 
	home-made flour dough or dough that  air dries.   Place dough 
	around the sides of the tube to form the shape of a volcano.  
	Paint dough brown  and let sit overnight to dry in an aluminum 
	pie plate.  (be sure to put names on the pies plate for the next 
	day)  Next day let the volcanoes erupt.  Put one teaspoon of 
	baking soda in all of the tubes.  Add red food coloring to
	small amount of vinegar.  (need about 1 tablespoon for each
	volcano) Add about 1 tablespoon of red vinegar to soda mixture in
	tube. Mixture will bubble out like a volcano erupting. Start
	collecting pie pans early in the year so each child may erupt their
	volcano at school and at home without making a mess!

				Mary Jo Ayres

	I add orange food coloring to the vinegar. When it "erupts," it 
	looks like hot lava! It's a fun activity but I suggest that you
	remind the children that this is very safe and will not really
	explode when you mix the ingredients. Each year, I find at least
	one child who does have this concern(but usually doesn't verbalize
	it until I reassure the whole class.)

		A valcano experiment taken from The World of Nature 
		        	by Wendy Pfeffer:

	1) With children helping to measure and pour, mix one-half cup of
	water, several drops of red food coloring, one-quarter cup
	dishwashing liquid, and one-quarter cup of vinegar into a pitcher
	or clean bottle.

	2) Add one-quarter cup of baking soda to a small, clean and empty 
	can or jar.  Take the children, the can and the pitcher of liquid 
	you prepared and go outside.  Bury the can in an outdoor sandbox 
	or dirt pile; be sure the lip of the can or jar is sticking out 
	of the sand.

	3)  Pour a little of the mixture from the pitcher into the can 
	and watch it bubble up and over-just like lava from a valcano.  
	Tell children that the baking soda mixes with the vinegar and makes
	a gas called carbon dioxide that acts like the bubbles in a soda.
	In a real valcano, there is gas which causes liquid rock to bubble
	in the same way.

	Let the children take turns describibg the experiment and the 
	results (pictures) Play the first part of Igor Stravinsky's Rite 
	of Spring and encourage children to pretend they are valcanos or
	earthquakes as they move to the music.

	Read:  What is a Valcano? by Chris Arvetis (Macmillan)