Susan's Homeschool Blog

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Today we will be making models of hydrocarbons and then performing an experiment with floating hydrocarbons. We are using Christian Kids Explore Chemistry by Bright Ideas Press, and the last five chapters in the book have to do with hydrocarbons.

What are hydrocarbons?

Hydrocarbons are a family of compounds that are composed of carbon and hydrogen atoms that are connected with covalent bonds that share electrons. We studied three different types of hydrocarbons:

• Alkanes (single bonds between the carbon and hydrogen atoms)
• Alkenes (at least one double bond between carbon and hydrogen atoms)
• Alkines (at least one triple bond between carbon and hydrogen atoms)

We will be making some models of hydrocarbons with styrofoam balls, paint, and toothpicks. You will see my kids assemble these hydrocarbon models in fast motion in the video.

Take a look at an Alkane model:

Take a look at an Alkene model:

Take a look at an Alkine model:

Now we will perform an experiment with floating hydrocarbons. You will need a mason jar, water, petroleum jelly, and motor oil. Look at what happens when we perform this experiment:

This is our final post for this exciting series of Christian Kids Explore Chemistry by Bright Ideas Press. We hope you have enjoyed our experiments in this series!

This post contains affiliate links. I was compensated for my work in writing this post.

Today we will be making saturated solutions. What is a saturated solution? It’s when the water is holding the most of a substance that it possibly can. We will be making a sugar solution and a salt solution, and we will do a fun identification game at the end, to see if we can identify which is salt and which is sugar. We are using Christian Kids Explore Chemistry by Bright Ideas Press, and this experiment will help you to understand saturated solutions.

I labeled the four glasses before doing the experiment. Two were labeled salt and two were labeled sugar. I put the labels on the bottom of the glasses. I used masking tape and permanent marker.

We poured water into each of the four glasses. Then we placed one teaspoon of salt into the water and stirred it. We placed a second teaspoon and a third teaspoon and so on until the water would no longer hold any more salt. At this point, some of the salt will fall to the bottom because the water itself can hold no more salt. The water is now saturated with salt. Do the same to another glass of water.

Using sugar, place the sugar, one teaspoon after another, into the water, stirring the water after each teaspoon. As soon as the water will hold no more sugar, the water is saturated with sugar. IV’s at the hospital are filled with glucose, so what is pumped into your body when you want to faint is similar to this saturated sugar solution.

Once you have two glasses of sugar solution and two glasses of salt solution, have your kids close their eyes. (Blindfold them if they look like they are cheating with one eye open.)

Slide the glasses around, shuffling their order so your kids can’t tell which solution is which. Now have your kids open their eyes, or take off the blindfold. Have the kids try to figure out which solution is which based on smell. Can you do it?

Now try to identify which solution is which by tasting them. The salt water is really strong and will remind you of ocean water crashing over you. The sugar water is certainly easy to identify, too!

You can watch this experiment here:

This post contains affiliate links. I was compensated for my work in writing this post.

Today we are doing a fun saltwater experiment where we freeze water with different amounts of salt to see which solution freezes faster. Yes, it’s like a race to see which freezes first! This experiment is from Christian Kids Explore Chemistry by Bright Ideas Press, and we have been working our way through the fun experiments in this book.

First you will want to get four plastic cups and label them by writing on a piece of paper with a black marker. We attached the labels to the plastic cups with packing tape. These are the labels:

• Water
• 1 teaspoon salt + water
• 2 teaspoons salt + water
• 3 Teaspoons salt + water

Pour water into the four glasses and measure the correct amount of salt to put into each glass. Stir the solutions until the salt has dissolved. Now place them all in the freezer. If your freezer is a drawer like mine, you will need to lodge the glasses in place with a frozen lasagna or other large froze object. (Watch the video to see how I kept the glasses from falling over in the freezer.)

Which glass of water will freeze first?

After two hours, the glass with only water in it was solid ice. The glass with one teaspoon of salt in the water was a little less solid than the first glass. You could scrape it like a snow cone because it wasn’t completely solid. The glass with two teaspoons of salt was even less frozen, and the one with three teaspoons of salt was not frozen at all when I broke through a thin layer of ice on the top. Under that thin layer of ice was liquid.

The more salt that you have in the water, the longer it takes to freeze. After four hours, all the glasses were more frozen, but the one with three teaspoons of salt was still quite liquid.

After 24 hours, we checked the glasses again, and all of them were finally solid. Take a look:

So what does this mean? Salt lowers the temperature at which water will solidify, so when you are making ice cream, for example, you can put salt on the ice to keep the ice cold longer.

You can also use salt to melt snow in your driveway in the winter.