Make your own volcano! 🌋

👨‍🔬 Make your own volcano using baking soda and vinegar! 🌋

In 1957 Marie Tharp discovered that our continents move because of volcanic activity (if you want to learn more about that story, click here!). In this post we’ll explain how you can make your own volcano together with your kids using things you’ve probably got laying around in your kitchen!

What you'll need

Step by step

① Setting the scene

Time to get creative! Take some toys, paper, tape... and make a completely unaware environment that has a volcano in the center.

Use a bottle as the base for your volcano. The more narrow the bottle neck, the bigger the explosion (check out the short clip below to see what happens (as was the case with us) if you underestimate the reaction...)

Tip: Make sure that everything you use in this experiment can be cleaned easily.

② Baking soda

Use the funnel to put some baking soda in the bottle (we used 3 big spoons, on second thought that might have been a bit too much...).

Carefully add a glass of warm water to the bottle, and shake gently to make sure the baking soda dissolves completely.

Tip: If you want to get a 'real' lava effect, you can add some food coloring and soap (for foam) to the water.
Add vinegar

③ Vinegar

Pour (with the funnel) some vinegar in the bottle.
The sour vinegar will react (quite fast, and quite heavy) with the sodium bicarbonate, and will start expanding.
The only place the recation can go is out of the top of the bottle, making the volcano erupt!

Tip: The reaction can be a bit unpredictable (see video below), make sure you perform the experiment in a place that's easy to clean, and make sure everyone's at a safe distance from the reaction. 👍

Our own (quite explosive) volcano: