Chemical Reaction - Elephant Toothpaste

Elephant Toothpaste is an easy, fun, entertaining and engaging lesson activity that shows students how a chemical reaction works. 

For this post I chose to use Animoto, which allowed me to document an experiment I did. Not only is this experiment fun, it shows children that learning about science can be fun, it's not all about numbers, and graphs, you can create things as well. This can be an easy activity to do in a classroom, the children can play with the finished product, and it can all go down the drain. The cons are that it can be hard to connect this to an actual scientific occurrence in nature, but you can also bring up volcanoes, or geysers like Yellowstone. You can ask the children if they have been to Yellowstone, then talk about why the geysers explode that way.

Materials: 

-Empty plastic bottle
-Dry yeast (found in the baking section of the grocery store)
-Warm water
-Liquid dish soap
-3% hydrogen peroxide
-Measuring cups 
-Measuring spoons
-Safety glasses
-Large tub or tray to catch the foam 
-Location for the activity that can tolerate spills (of hydrogen peroxide as well as possibly food coloring), such as a kitchen or bathroom—or an outdoor location 
-Liquid food coloring (optional)
-Different-shaped bottles or glasses (optional)