10 Fun and Safe Chemical Experiments You Can Do at Home

Many people believe that chemistry is perplexing and dull. But as most that we do here is chemical reactions, it has a lot of enjoyable aspects to it. Here we explore the top 10 fun things you can do with chemistry, and you can conduct these simple experiments with whatever stuff you have at home!

Borax Crystal Snowflake

You can create borax crystal snowflakes overnight, color them as you want, and keep them for the whole year! They don’t melt. You can use it as a decorating object, and as a bonus, it helps keeping your home clean.

First, you need a pipe cleaner. Cut it into three equal parts. Twirl them together to create a six-sided snowflake form. You need to submerge this into water. So get a string, bind it with the soon-to-be snowflake and attach it to something (might be a pen). Ready a bowl of hot water, and add borax to it. Now simply submerge the pipes into this. Be sure to keep it floating below the water surface with the pen and string, so that it doesn’t touch the bottom of the bowl. Leave it like that. You’ll get your snowflake overnight!

Bouncy Eggs

Take an egg. Boil it to the point that the shell hardens. Take the hard-shelled egg and dip it in a glass of vinegar. Leave it for a full day. While in vinegar, you will see bubbles. That is because of carbon dioxide. The shell is made of calcium carbonate, which reacts with the vinegar, and the carbon dioxide gets subtracted. After a day, take the egg out of the water. Now rinse it with water, and the shell will come off. There you go! A soft, bouncy egg. This though, may take more than a day. You should keep the egg dipped in vinegar for three days at the first attempt.

Mentos Volcano

The very first thing that may come to your mind after hearing the term “volcano” in an article related to chemistry, might be the baking soda volcano. Yes, these two are different, and the mentos one is far superior!

Get diet soda and mentos candy. It needs to be DIET for the best experience. Before placing the candies into the carbonated beverage bottle, you need to place them in a test tube, or any kind of tube which will hold the candies in a single column. Place a card or something solid enough to hold the candies on top of the test tube. Now invert it. Get your diet soda ready. As soon as you open the bottle, drop all the candies smoothly into it. Seal the bottle and contain it for a few seconds. Then release and boom! Be sure to do this in the yard or bathroom though, otherwise, the cleaning sorrow may overcome your joy!

Invisible Ink

This is a simple, neat, and fun trick. Take some baking soda, and mix it with the same amount of water to create a saturated solution. Get a paintbrush, use the solution as ink and write something on a piece of paper. It will disappear in a small amount of time. To make it reappear, simply use heat. You may use a candle, or even a bulb will work.

Fireworks in a Jar

Covid-19 has really cursed our lives. Despite the fact that most places no longer have restrictions, we have made it a habit to stay at home. If you do not want to miss fireworks because of staying at home, this experiment is for you!

Take a jar, and fill half of a quarter of it using vegetable oil (such as canola oil). If you think the amount of oil is too low, you can add some more (depending on the jar size). Add food color; two drops for each red, blue and green. Stir it up. You won’t see the oil get colored because oil and food colors don’t mix. After stirring it well, pour this into a jar almost filled with water. Don’t remove your eyes, keep staring. You’ll notice a lovely color play in the water!

Frankenworms

Many call these dancing gummy worms, because of their quasi-dancing gestures. This is a fascinating experiment that brings our favorite gummy worms to life!

Take some gummy worms and cut each one of them into quarters. Not horizontally, but vertically. It needs to be long and thin. Now take a jar of water, and put some baking soda in it. Keep adding baking soda until a small amount remains and does not dissolve. This means you need the water to be completely saturated with baking soda. Put the gummy worms in this solution and leave it for 15 to 30 minutes. When the time is up, simply pick up the gummy worms, and put them into a jar filled with vinegar. In some time, the gummy worms will become frankenworms; they’ll start moving by themselves, even dancing!

Animated Marked Human

You’ve surely seen digital cartoon animation, but what about analog cartoon animation?

Take a dry wipe marker. Now get a plate, make sure it is clean, its surface smooth. Draw a man, a woman, or whatever you like on it. Pour some water on the plate. You’ll see that the human is

moving! You can even touch the marking as if it is a string and pull it off of the water.

Black Snakes

Okay, this may sound scary. At least I don’t know anyone who likes snakes. Why would we want to “make” them? Trust me, it’s “dangerously” fun and totally safe.

Fill a bowl with sand. Now take another bowl. Add four tablespoons of sugar, and a single tablespoon of baking soda. Add some fuel to it, such as Zippo lighter fluid. Light it up. You’ll see a black, scary snake coming out of the sand! Don’t be terrified; it’s not a real snake. Sand is yellowish, the mixture of sugar and baking soda is white, and this is just another substance that is black, emerging from the reaction of these three. This is a fun and safe way to scare your friends silly!

Burning Money

Burning money is illegal. Then what am I teaching here? Come on, I’m not actually telling you to burn your money like the Joker, it’s a chemical experiment where nothing burns!

Dip money in rubbing alcohol, which is 70% isopropyl alcohol. You need to dip the money fully into the alcohol. Even if only a small portion of the money is not dipped correctly, it will actually burn. While dipping it, don’t touch the note with your hands, don’t touch the alcohol. Use a stick or something. After the note is fully dipped, bring it out using some kind of a holder; don’t touch it with your hands. Use fire to light it up, you’ll see the note burning, but it doesn’t actually burn! You can try this using a simple piece of cloth as well. After the pseudo-burning is finished, you’ll notice that the cloth is dry clean as well.

Coloured Smoke Bombs

Though the word “bomb” doesn’t sound so good, I can assure you that this is absolutely safe, nothing to worry about. This is an extremely fun experiment to do. Though you may need to work harder than the other projects on this list to make this. The more difficult the work, the more enjoyable it is.

Mix three tablespoons of saltpeter and two tablespoons of sugar. Saltpeter is potassium nitrate which you will find in garden supply shops. In a saucepan, heat the mixture at a low temperature. Sugar will become brown with time. Start and keep stirring it until it looks like peanut butter. Take it off of the saucepan and onto a normal bowl. Add a teaspoon of baking soda and mix it with the potassium nitrate sugar by stirring. This is the main part of the smoke bomb created. To color it, add dyes. Blue and orange dyes work the best. You may find dyes in craft and hobby shops. Add three tablespoons of your desired dyes to the previous mixture and stir it up well. The whole process needs to be done while the mixture is hot and bendable.

The chemical part is done. Now let’s come to packaging. Get cardboard, make a tube out of it, fill it with the mixture, and Dip a pencil into it. Not fully, only as much so that the pencil stands still. Leave it and let it cool down. Come back after an hour. After the mixture has hardened within the tube, bring out the pencil. Insert a firework fuse into the hole. You can buy it from hobby shops or can simply scavenge it from a firework. Push pieces of small cotton balls inside to steady the fuse so that it doesn’t fall off. Make sure a part of the fuse is outside of the tube so you may light it. Cover this whole thing with duct tape, even the lower and upper part, only leaving the hole to light the fuse. You’re all set, Have fun!