How can I make slime?
My son and me making slime
Every few months or so, my son and I like to make straight-chain polymers out of of polyvinyl acrylic (PVA) and sodium tetraborate. It’s pretty simple to do. You just mix one part PVA with one part dihydrogen oxide. Then make a solution of about 40 mg of Na2B4O7, and 400 cc of more dihydrogen oxide. Then slowly mix this solution into the PVA mixture. Of course, we add a little food coloring for effect. The result is this great fun-to-play-with polymer!
Okay, so Polyvinyl acrylic is just Elmer’s glue. Sodium Tetraborate is household Borax. And dihydrogen oxide is water. And our polymer is more commonly called slime. I figure it’s never too early to start teaching my son the chemistry behind what we we’re doing. In a nutshell, making your own slime is easy. Here are the steps summarized:
- Pour a bottle of Elmer’s Glue in a bowl. Add the same amount of water. Stir.
- Put about the same amount of water in another bowl and add a couple tablespoons of Borax. Stir.
- Add this Borax solution to the glue mixture a little at a time while stirring.
It doesn’t take much to make a nice slimy polymer. Experiment with the volumes and you’ll see how easy it is.
We love to make slime here! We learned how on Steve Spangler’s website, and then we ordered some of his slime and it was AWESOME – the kids went nuts! The Spangler website offers several kinds of slime, too.
My kids haven’t been bored a single day since we discovered Steve Spangler, and signed up for his Experiment of the Week!
I’m not a salesman or anything – we just love Steve Spangler here at our house!
You should consider sending this post to the Carnival of Education! I’m hosting next week, and if you are interested in having your post included, just send it to me at: MamacitaG@gmail.com
I know other educators and parents would like to read what you have to say.
Another great kit I recently reviewed is the Slime Laboratory by Wild Science. http://aetoy.com/slime-laboratory.html.
They’ve got a couple of other neat chemistry-type kits out there, like for making your own soap and perfume. But I think my kids like the slime kits best of all. I mean, they’re all pretty fun, but what would you rather play with when you’re done: slime or soap?
But for girls- maybe the perfume making kit would be pretty awesome. http://aetoy.com/perfume-laboratory.html
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Wow, that sounds like fun! I’m going to try it myself. Do you know where I can get the sodium tetraborate? Or Borax? Thanks for posting this. You are awesome, Science Guy…