Wow your kids with a bubbly chemistry lesson

“Plop plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is.” It’s been over 20 years since I saw that commercial, but I can still hear the tune in my head. As we studied chemistry, and we hit the ionic bonds lesson for our science lessons the commercial popped back into my head. Alka seltzer tablets are a great example of ionic bonds, and they make for a fun chemistry lesson.

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Supplies for our ionic bonds lesson

chemistry demonstration printable (on the subscriber page, JOIN MY NEWSLETTER), glass of water, alka seltzer tablets (you can see I just grabbed a box from Wal-Mart), CKE Chemistry (which had this demonstration in the lesson)

Breaking ionic bonds lesson

Before getting started I had them fill out what they used, it’s important as you are teaching kids about science experiments to show them how to work through a problem step by step and the first step is always “what are you using?” so you can repeat your experiment.

Then we wrote down what we were going to do, quick simple answers.

Finally came the fun part, dropping in the tablets to see what happened. After observing all of the bubbles they wrote down what they saw, and we talked through it all together.

The kids had a blast watching the tablets dissolve, and if I get the courage, I’ll upload the video we made. I say, if I have the courage because I made a rather big mistake in the video, which I realized as soon as I stopped the video recording, but I’m nervous about all the chemistry majors popping in and telling me how incredibly wrong I am. Silly, I know, but that’s what it is.

The science behind this ionic bonds lesson

Basically, putting the tablet in water causes a reaction that breaks up the simple ionic bonds.

Science doesn’t have to be complicated to learn something

Often times we put off our science lessons because the idea of doing them seems difficult. IN reality they are only as complicated as we make them.

• How do stomach acids work?
• How does a cow’s stomach work?
• How do ocean currents work?