Making slime with glue
Here's how to make a handful of slime with a group of small kids, while explaining that sometimes science looks like magic but you can explain the effects.
Contents |
Materials
Per student:
- 10cc of glue (experience has taught us that transparent kidsglue from Action or opaque knutsellijm from Pipoos work best, see https://twitter.com/aliekens/status/762273574363201536)
- 10cc of water
- 1 cup
- fork (or other stirring tool)
Common:
- Bowl with tepid water
- 10cc of powdered Borax
- Food coloring
- Glitters
Steps
Prep: How does it work?
Explain how glue works: on the molecular level glue consists of many short polymers. These polymers are sticky and can connect two surfaces.
Glue is similar to a big pile of tiny steel chains. If you grab one, you're only gonna take out the short chain.
Now imagine throwing a bunch of molecular magnets in this pile of little chains. If you pull out one, you will also pull out a bunch of other chains, in a very slimy manner.
The borax works in a simialr manner as the magnets, it connects the short polymers together to form longer polymers, resulting in the slimy end result of this workshop.
Hands on: let's make this!
Each kid first creates their own mix of ingredients:
- Put 10cc of glue in the cup
- Add 10cc of water to the cup
- Stir to create a glue/water mixture
- Optionally, add a few drops of food coloring and glitters, by choice
Prepare a water-borax mixture:
- Prepare a bowl with tepid water (make sure it's not too hot for the kids' hands!)
- Add 10cc of borax
- Mix well until the borax crystals are dissolved in the water
Time for slime!
- Each kid takes turns to turn her glue mixture into slime
- Dump the contents of the cup into the bowl with borax, the glue immediately turns into slime!
- Each kid grabs and pulls their slime back out the borax mixture, back in to their cup
- Playtime!