We’ll admit, we take a little bit of offense when someone says, “Snow only comes in white.” Apparently, they’ve never seen the Rainbow Snow activity.
Line up the six large 9oz cups so that they are almost touching. Then align the 6 smaller (2oz) cups evenly with the 6 larger, on the yard stick.
Use a hot glue gun to glue each of the 2oz plastic cups on a yard stick so that they are equally spaced apart.
Fill each of the 2oz cups with warm water.
Use the food coloring to color the water in each cup. If you would like to make a rainbow pattern, use the following guide:
Use the blue scoop that came in the Instant Snow package to measure out 1 scoop of Insta-Snow powder into each of the large 9oz plastic cups.
Carefully pick up the yard stick and line up the cups. Tip the stick to pour all of the water at once into the cups with the Instant Snow powder. Don’t take your eyes off the erupting snow!
Insta-Snow is actually derived from the superabsorbent polymer found in baby diapers. The only difference (and it’s a big one) is that the Insta-Snow polymer not only absorbs water, but the long chains of molecules swell to an enormous size. The polymer soaks up water using the process of osmosis (water molecules pass through a barrier from one side to the other). When water comes in contact with the polymer, it moves from outside of the polymer to the inside and causes it to swell. The polymer chains have an elastic quality, but they can stretch only so far and hold just so much water.
The Insta-Snow reaction is a great example of a physical reaction – a reaction where the substance itself does not change. When an ice cube melts, a physical reaction takes place where the solid ice turns into a liquid, but the substance (water) never changes – it’s still water!
If you think of the Insta-Snow powder as millions of tiny sponges, it’s easy to see that neither the Insta-Snow powder or the water was changed. If you allow the water to evaporate, the Insta-Snow powder dries out and returns to its previous state, ready to be used again.
The Hands-on Version…
If the law of conservation of mass is correct, you should have recovered the same amount of Insta-Snow powder you started with at the beginning of the experiment. This proves that the reaction that took place was a physical reaction and not a chemical reaction. The composition of the Insta-Snow powder never actually changed.
While adding water to a super water-absorbing polymer and watching the mound of fluffy white snow erupt is fascinating, it is not a science fair project. You can create a science fair project by identifying a variable, or something that you can change, in this experiment. Let’s take a look at some of the variable options that might work:
These are just a couple of ideas, but you aren’t limited to them! Come up with different ideas of variables to test and give them a try. Remember, you can only change one variable at a time for each test. For example, if you are testing different water temperatures, make sure that all other factors in the test remain the same!
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