On Thursday afternoon, nine brave scientists (and two safety supervisors), ventured into the field at Gilmore with a bin full of supplies to see which combinations would make the best explosions.

We started simple. Vinegar was poured into a Ziplock bag and baking soda was wrapped in toilet paper before being added to the vinegar. The bag was quickly sealed and thrown on the grass for observation. The best explosion from this experiment was the bag that exploded mid air. After all science is all about big messes!

The next experiment was two-fold. We all sat down and poured diet-pepsi into four different cups.

We then added a variety of things into the diet pepsi to see what the different reactions would be and how strong the reactions were.

The most popular ingredient, Mentos, was then added to the remaining pop in the bottles for a bigger "ka-boom".  This lead to one of the more rememberable moment of the afternoon.  The Mentos reacted so quickly that it ended up erupting all over Brianna. What a mess!

Last was the most complicated experiment of them all. After carefully following instructions, measuring ingredients, and waiting patiently (we discovered not all explosions happen suddenly), we got to watch elephant toothpaste make the biggest mess by far. We made the toothpaste in both a bottle and a bowl to see if there would be a difference in the reaction. The bottle was chosen to be the more exciting method for its volcano-like reaction and providing the chance to make a bigger mess by jumping on the bottle.

            

That was all the experiments we managed to do before the rain started. Thank you to photographer Shaiyaz for his awesome videos J

-Brianna