🧪 Reaction Lab › Kitchen Chemistry
🥣 Kitchen Chemistry
Real chemistry with safe things from the kitchen. Pick your grade band to see what you may do and what a grown-up does.
🛡️ Safety card for every experiment
- 🥽 Safety glasses or goggles on.
- 🧑🍳 A grown-up is with you the whole time.
- 🚫 Never taste or sniff an experiment.
- 🧴 Never mix cleaning products. Some make poison gas.
- 💥 Dangerous reactions are watch-only here. We show why they are dangerous, never how to make them.
- 🧼 Clean up and wash your hands when you finish.
🥬 Red cabbage color magic
Try with a grown-up
You need
- A few red cabbage leaves, torn small
- Hot water from a grown-up
- 3 clear cups
- Lemon juice, baking soda, plain water
Steps
- A grown-up pours hot water over the leaves and waits 10 minutes. The water turns purple.
- Pour the cooled purple water into 3 cups.
- Add lemon juice to cup 1, a pinch of baking soda to cup 2, nothing to cup 3.
- Compare the colors.
The chemistry: Cabbage juice is an indicator: acids turn it pink, bases turn it blue or green. Lemon juice is an acid; baking soda is a base.
⚠️ Hot water: grown-up only.
🥛 Milk color burst
Try with a grown-up
You need
- A shallow plate of milk
- Food coloring
- Dish soap and a cotton swab
Steps
- Add a few drops of different colors to the milk.
- Dip the swab in dish soap.
- Touch the swab to the middle of the milk and hold it still.
The chemistry: Soap breaks the surface tension and grabs the fat in the milk. The moving fat drags the colors into swirls.
⚠️ Do not drink the milk afterwards.
🌈 Density rainbow
Try with a grown-up
You need
- A tall clear glass
- Honey, dish soap, water with food coloring, cooking oil
Steps
- Pour a little honey into the bottom.
- Slowly pour dish soap down the side.
- Slowly add the colored water, then the oil.
- Watch the layers stay apart.
The chemistry: Each liquid has a different density (how much mass fits in the same space). Denser liquids sink below lighter ones.
⚠️ Wipe spills right away; oil and soap make floors slippery.
💎 Grow sugar crystals
Try with a grown-up
You need
- Sugar and water
- A clean jar, a string or wooden stick, a clothespin
Steps
- A grown-up heats water and stirs in sugar until no more dissolves. This syrup is very hot.
- The grown-up pours the syrup into the jar and lets it cool.
- Hang the stick in the jar with the clothespin, not touching the bottom.
- Check every day for a week.
The chemistry: Hot water holds more dissolved sugar than cool water. As it cools and water evaporates, sugar comes out of the solution and stacks into crystals.
⚠️ Hot syrup burns skin: the grown-up does the heating and pouring. Do not eat crystals made with strings or dusty sticks.
🌋 Fizzy volcano (outdoors)
Try with a grown-up
You need
- Baking soda
- Vinegar
- A cup or small bottle on a tray, outside
- A drop of dish soap and food coloring (optional)
Steps
- Go outside and put the cup on the tray.
- Add two spoonfuls of baking soda (and the soap and color).
- Pour in vinegar and step back to watch.
The chemistry: Vinegar (an acid) and baking soda (a base) react and make carbon dioxide gas. The gas makes the bubbles. Watch it in 3D on Predict, then watch.
⚠️ Never put the lid on a closed bottle: the gas pushes hard. Keep it away from eyes.
The pictures are simple models made for learning. Real atoms are far too small to see, and real shapes vary.