Is that lava?!

Blobs in a Bottle         

Resources:

• A clean 1-litre clear soft drink bottle

• 3/4 cup of water                   

• Vegetable oil

• Antacid tablets (such as Quick-Eze or Mylanta)

• Food colouring

Procedure:

1. Pour the water into the bottle.
2. Use a measuring cup to slowly pour the vegetable oil into the bottle until it’s almost full. You may have to wait a few minutes for the oil and water to separate.
3. Add 10 drops of food colouring to the bottle; the drops will pass through the oil and then mix with the water below.
4. Break an antacid tablet in half and drop it into the bottle. Watch it sink to the bottom and watch the lava start to flow.
5. To keep the effect going, just add another piece of antacid tablet.

Big questions:

1. Does the temperature of the water affect the reaction? Yes, if for example, the water is much hotter the tables will dissolve much, much faster.
2. Does the effect still work if the cap is put on the bottle? Yes.
3. Does the size of the tablet pieces affect the number of blobs created? If the tablet is broken up into more smaller pieces they would be easier to dissolve than the ones that are now broken up.
4. What is an oil spill and how do they happen? Oil spill is when liquid petroleum hydrocarbon is spilled into parts of water. The most common and main causes of this are  tankers, barges, pipelines, refineries, drilling rigs, and storage facilities.
5. How do ice and water interact during an oil spill?  Oil booms are hindered by pack ice; the oil may be frozen and captured in growing ice or spread below a solid ice sheet.
6. How does oil affect marine life during an oil spill?One of the reasons it's bad is because it contaminates the sea mammals food supply which in a long period of time would cause them to die.

Scientific Explanation (How it works):

The reaction of water and oil separating is caused by the density of both liquids. The oil is less dense than water; also the molecules of the water are more attracted to each other than it is of the oil and so it makes that reaction. When the tablet is dropped on the mixture, it will pass through the oil and into the water dissolving it in the process, creating gas which would try and escape to the atmosphere creating bubbles that would interfere with the food colouring creating the lava like effect.