Experimenting with Dry Ice

So excited to share with you about our Science yesterday. We got to play with Dry Ice. I have seen some of the coolest experiments with Dry Ice on Steve Spangler’s website and always wanted to do some in my classroom but I was never able to get any Dry Ice. Yesterday we got an unexpected email from our high school science teacher that he had some dry ice and anyone that wanted to use it could come get some. Soooo… I walked as quickly as I could way over to the high school to get some but he wasn’t there. I left a message on his computer with a post-it and sent him an email when I got back to my room.  He brought some my way within a few minutes.

All day long the kids were asking about this big jug in my room. The one that was full of the Dry Ice from the science teacher but they didn’t know. I told them it was for Science at the end of the day and they were going to love it. I googled Experiments with Dry Ice and found a few that we could do. I always like to practice experiments I do with kids ahead of time, but this was unexpected and Dry Ice only lasts so long so I didn’t have time to practice any of them with all day inside recess. I didn’t want to waste any of it and I wanted it to be a fun surprise. I found experiments that had things I could use from my cupboards. I used empty film canisters, food coloring, dawn dish soap, and a quarter.  I also got some hot water and cold water from the teacher’s lounge and we were all set. If you have never experimented with Dry Ice before it looks pretty much like regular ice cubes and you handle it with gloves. Your student will love it and so will you.

These simple easy experiments were a hit with my class.

Inflate a Rubber Glove
Just put a few cubes of dry ice in a rubber glove hold it closed where you put you hands in and soon it inflates before your eyes.

Popping Film Canisters
Just drop a cube or two of Dry Ice into the 35mm film canister put the lid on and wait. The cap pops off and go flying up in the air. We did about 5 of them at once.

Singing Quarter
Press a warm quarter against the Dry Ice and it will scream. After the quarter gets cold it quits. We did this with a quarter we had soaked in warm water and one we had warm at room temperature and both worked very well.

Lots of Bubbles
We added warm water and dish soap to a bowl with the Dry Ice in it. We even added different colors of food coloring and it bubbled to the top of the bowl.

Foggy Bowl
This is the thing most people do with it. Just add water to the Dry Ice in a bowl and watch it fog up and around the bowl. The students wanted to add food coloring to it to see if it would change but it didn’t change the color of our fog just the color of our water.

I had a couple student’s film our experiments on their iPads and I put them into a cool little iMovie trailer after school. Take a look and maybe you’ll be inspired to try some experiments with Dry Ice.