Hi,

I am in secondary school studying chemistry. I chair the school's STEM society and am wanting to give a talk and practical on the elephants toothpaste that you may have seen online.

Elephants toothpaste is large amounts of oxygen trapped in soap. To make a plume of this, you use hydrogen peroxide  and a catalyst that releases the oxygen at an increased rate such as potassium Iodide (iodide ions are our catalyst).

I am wanting to give this demonstration to other students and need to work out the volume of 'bubbles' that will be made so that I do not make too much.

I will be using 100 volumes H2o2

Also I understand volume as a measurement of concentration in this case, however a lot of online sources use percentage. Do I take this as percentage by mass or by volume.

Thanks

 

I've never heard of elephant's toothpaste, though I suppose they must have some arrangement.

Have you got a link?

 

% concentration could be w/w, v/v or w/v.

Since one phase is gas I would assume v/v.

There are loads of articles on this online.They seem to suggest between around 50 and 100ml of hydrogen peroxide. (And recommend safety equipment.)

1 hour ago, studiot said:

I've never heard of elephant's toothpaste, though I suppose they must have some arrangement.

Have you got a link?

 

% concentration could be w/w, v/v or w/v.

Since one phase is gas I would assume v/v.

Attached is my practical proposal. It has a link at the bottom that should explain things. Also here is a youtube link : 

 

Elephants Toothpaste Experiment.docx

1 hour ago, Strange said:

There are loads of articles on this online.They seem to suggest between around 50 and 100ml of hydrogen peroxide. (And recommend safety equipment.)

Ok so I have seen these but my plan is to scale it down so each student can have a mini experiment. Also I need to work out the volume I will create as if I make mess my teacher will kille me

Also I was wanting to let each student do this mini kids version. Here, yeast is the catalyst, does anyone know the exact decomposition reaction which is happening here? https://www.thoughtco.com/kid-friendly-elephant-toothpaste-demo-604164

On 9/12/2019 at 6:07 PM, studiot said:

I've never heard of elephant's toothpaste, though I suppose they must have some arrangement.

 

I presume you didn't search for it.

Yeast produces an enzyme which destroys hydrogen peroxide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalase