A while ago I bought some water beads for sensory play. We used them in a big flexi bucket and added various kitchen utensils – tea strainer, bowls, measuring cups, spoons etc.
As soon as Small saw how I had to soak the beads for them to expand he asked if we could experiment with using different liquids and see if we get different results and today we set up the experiment.
We put three water beads in each of our four containers and filled the first one with tap water, per the instructions on the packet. We did this to act as a control – essentially to show what the beads should look like once soaked. To the second container we added salt water, for the third we used vegetable oil and the last one was bleach. I really don’t recommend this last one if you have kids who won’t leave the containers alone, we have put ours on a windowsill out of reach just in case. Small chose the liquids we used, and he understands that bleach is not something we touch or ingest, but putting them out of reach means he can watch the changes but with no potential accidents. Be safe, folks! You can use whatever liquids you choose, just remember to do a control sample with plain water.
After just a few minutes we could see that the tap water beads had started to expand, the salt water ones less so and the oil ones hadn’t changed. The bleach beads had turned green and were covered in tiny bubbles which Big, an organic chemist, thinks are oxygen from the bleach reacting with the polyacrylamide the beads are made from.
After two hours the tap water beads were growing, salt water beads growing but slower, the beads in oil were still looking the same and the beads in the bleach had grown slightly and were floating.
One day after we set up the experiment, and the bleach has completely dissolved the beads! Small is very pleased at this discovery and reiterated to me that we needed to do one batch in tap water to compare the others to. The scientific method at work!
I will add our results as we get them, I’d love to hear what liquids you use and the results you get if you try this experiment.
Living Outside the Box 