6th day: Playing with fire

As you may have noticed already I really love both chemistry and biology, but it doesn't mean that I despise physics and mathemathics (and geology), but well when I can explain chemical reactions and biology related stuff is when I enjoy more these workshops. That's why I decided to do a truly chemistry workshop.

What I tried to replicate this time was the experiment known as black snake which is formed by the reaction of sugar and sodium bicarbonate to the heat. 4 main reactions happen during the process:

- Sodium bicarbonate is decomposed, and sodium carbonate, water and carbon dioxide is obtained.

- The alcohol reacts with the oxygen and carbon dioxide and water is obtained.

- The sugar reacts with the oxygen as well, and carbon dioxide and water are obtained

- The sugar present in the inner part of the mixture does not react with the oxygen, however it gets decomposed due to the high temperatures in water and carbon.

The carbon and sodium carbonate obtained from the decomposition of sugar and sodium bicarbonate respectively will be the main compounds of the snake. On the other hand, the carbon dioxide, will push the two compounds upwards, getting this snake-like figure. 

Even if the kids were quite attentive and liked it when I put the mixture on fire, it was not successful. Therefore, instead of obtained a snake-like tower it just reacted and only a few small towers were obtained, nothing comparable to what I thought about.

With these two images I proceed to compare what I should have got (left image) to what I really got (right image). In the latter the combustion is still going on, however the final result was not anything remarckable either. 

Possible errors why it did not work: 

- The lack of sand, which enables a more even distribution of the fuel.

- The usage of hand sanitizer instead of fuel may have led to this situation. In addition, this second problem is still closely related to the previous one, since, as I have stated, the sand allows the fuel or the alcohol to be evenly distributed.