Two unusual chemical volcanoes of oil and salt

Volcanoes are not quite similar in principle, they are quite interesting and beautiful to look at.

The main thing is a lot of imagination and the ability to change these volcanoes at will. Almost the same as with the soda volcanoes – the main thing is your imagination.

For the butter volcano we will need:

• sunflower oil
• water
• any colorant (food or children’s coloring)
• 1 fizzy tablet
• pipette
• transparent glass or any other transparent container

Pour water into a clear glass about a third of the volume of the glass. Add the same amount of sunflower oil.

Let stand for a couple of minutes. Water and oil have different densities and do not mix with each other, so two immiscible layers are formed in the glass: a colorless layer – water and a yellowish layer – oil. Even at this stage, my child was very interested, and several times he stirred the mixture with a spoon and watched as it immediately separated into two layers.

In a separate small container, dilute the food coloring or dye. It is necessary to make a bright solution. You don’t need a lot of it, about a couple of tablespoons.

Use a pipette to take this solution and drop a drop at a time into a glass with oil and water. The drops, thanks to the oil, are separated from each other and hang in the thickness of the solution, on the border of the separation of water and oil.

And now we throw an effervescent tablet into this solution.

The carbon dioxide released from the tablet stirs the solution and creates a kind of bubbling volcano.

Such an interesting volcano of oil, water, and fizzy tablet! The only pity is that its “eruption” ends very quickly while the tablet is dissolving. But how many new things can be invented on its basis!

For example, take not one, but three pills. Or change the amount of oil (or water) and see how it erupts. Or to make the initial bottom layer of water slightly tinted with some dye, and to make the second solution, which we take with an eyedropper, a different color and very bright.

There may be many variants, use your imagination!

Only, if you show this experience to children, make sure they did not put into their mouths the products of the volcano eruption, explain them that they should not drink this solution.

And now for the second chemical volcano.

For the volcano of salt you will need almost the same things as for the previous experiment:

• sunflower oil
• water
• any coloring agent
• fine salt
• pipette
• Transparent glass or any other clear container

Pour water in a transparent glass about a third of the volume of the glass, add as much sunflower oil and let stand a couple of minutes.

Just add a pipette tinted with any dye solution.

Take a teaspoon of salt and very slowly pour it into a glass with a solution.

See what happens. The salt is heavy and settles to the bottom of the glass, taking small drops of oil with it. In the water, which is at the bottom of the glass, the salt dissolves and the oil particles, not held by anything, rise to the surface again. Sometimes this experience is also called a “lava lamp,” because what happens in the glass is really a bit like a lava lamp.