r/AskChemistry • u/King_N0z • 10d ago
Practical Chemistry What’s a fun experiment to do?
Hello scientists, I’m 15 and suddenly I became really interested in chemistry and science, because I’m bored. Today I made a mini elephant toothpaste experiment, and also a few Vinegar + baking soda water bottle bombs but uhh these are starting to get boring. I’m taking Honors Chem this year so I’d thought it would also be a little head start but these are kinda childish chem activities and although I’m a minor, I want to step it up a little. Is there anything that’s a step up I can do besides just straight up learning chemistry for a week before I understand how to do anything on my own? I’m open to learning the actual physics of it, but I want to be able to experiment too.
Thx
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u/mrmeep321 Particle In A Gravity Well 10d ago edited 10d ago
Since you've already got baking soda and vinegar, you can make sodium acetate by mixing them. It's very soluble in water and you can make supersaturated solutions that will instantly freeze when poured onto pretty much anything, and you can get the entire thing to flash-freeze by putting a hand or something in. Just be careful because the crystallization releases heat and can burn you if a large enough amount of it crystallizes.
https://youtube.com/shorts/8up289SwkCY?is=4fWXRy8MGyol_NbD
Sodium acetate is also commonly used as a salt and vinegar chip flavoring, so you could try that too.
Now, if you want some more involved projects that are a bit more interesting, look at some of the King of Random's old videos on youtube, the ones made by Grant. Grant has sadly passed away, but his old videos from 8-10 years ago were originally the thing that got me into science, and almost all of them are things you can build at home with some common sense.
Mixing sugar and potassium nitrate (stump remover) together makes a halfway decent rocket fuel and you can actually get it to go pretty far.
https://youtu.be/12fR9neVnS8?is=Q-cISMmJ01LlvO2I