| Over this past Christmas, Dr. Wizzard, aka father-in-law, mentioned to Ava that he could make raisins float. Not knowing off hand if rasins naturally displaced more than they weigh to begin with, I'm not sure if I was really all that impressed with the claim. Ava on the other hand, of whom I'm almost certain had no idea as to whether or not raisins sink or float, was excited by his proclamation and demanded an exhibition. So while Dr. Wizard scrambled around for the necessary ingredients to perform his trick, I popped off with a few bold claims of my own that I knew I could prove. |
| |
| Hey Ava, watch me melt this ice cube... or, watch me make this make this rock sink. I was quite the riot for about a half hour until my father-in-law conceded that he did not have the items needed to perform his magic trick. Most notably, we were in need of a raisin. Seeing how we were semi-marooned on an island in North Carolina for the holidays, it seemed unlikely that any shriveled grapes would be making an appearance any time soon. Therefore, I had what I deemed to be a "green light" to poke all sorts of holes into my father-in-law's claim without fear of any real world repercussions. I started with some pen, paper and a calculator in an attempt to guess at the volume of a raisin. Having already been through this process herself once before, Ava quickly lost interest in the math side of the experiment and quickly moved on to something else rather scientific... like ferry-topia pop tarts. |
| |
| Sensing that all enthusiasm was now lost, my father-in-law decided to let me be the hero and coughed up the secrets behind floating raisins so that I could give it a try at home on a later date. So with proper credit given, I now present to you this edition of Testing 1,2,3. |
| |
| the test |
 |
| For starters, raisins do indeed sink. All math aside, if you put one in a glass of water it will drop to the bottom like a hot rock through butter. I was really sort of surprised that it wasn't at least even a little buoyant. Anyway, with that part of the equation finally put to bed, it was time to dip deep into the FY2007 rv.com "science budget" and buy some alka-seltzer. This, according to Dr. "trust me, I was a teacher for 35 years" is the secret ingredient that will make our raisin float. |
| |
| Now my only experience with alka-seltzer has been through tv. Pretty much anybody over 25 is familiar with the ole "plop plop fizz fizz" jingle. |
|
|
| |
But beyond that, I'm pretty much clueless as to what this stuff actually is. According to the box however, a tablet the size of a quarter contains lots of aspirin, even more citric acid and a ton of sodium bicarbonate. Now it's been a long time since I took a high school chemistry class, but I'm thinking that the sodium bicarbonate is the magic bullet at work here. |
| |
| Oh, and one more thing... if you ever go to Costco to buy alka-seltzer, you will come home with a lifetime supply of the stuff for about six bucks. Armed with that much ammo, Ava and I set out to raise much more than just raisins from the deep. |
| |
| Since we were no longer playing "Survivor: North Carolina", we had full access to pretty much anything we wanted... except, once again, for raisins. It was amazing! So as a substitute, we took turns sucking all the sugar off of about a dozen raisin bran raisins and spit them into a bowl for later testing. The things we do for science! |
| |
|
 |
|
| Other items chosen were peas, fruit chunks, crasins, blueberries and dried apples. For scale, we threw in a lego man complete with a nextel walkie-talkie. It was now "go time". |
| |
 |
| test 1 : raisin |
| Now after all the build up surrounding this experiment, at no point did I ever even consider what was to happen next. Total failure! |
| |
| That's right, absolutely nothing happened. We dropped in the alka-seltzer and watched it do it's "fizz fizz" thing... but nothing happened. I was shocked and Ava was more than a little bit disappointed. |
| |
| But considering the mess we had made in the kitchen in an attempt to pull this thing off, there was no way we were going to stop right there. However, I must say that at that point I felt the outlook was bleak. |
|
|
| |
| The only thing I could see happen that might play a factor on some of the other items we intended to raise was that there were some bubbles created by the alka-seltzer that actually stuck to the raisin. In theory, if enough of these bubbles were to latch on, the item they were sticking themselves to might float. It was a theory, but not much of one considering our first test. |
| |
 |
| test 2 : peas |
| Now that the whole "plop plop fizz fizz" thing had been seen, I could sense that this next test was important if I was to hold Alva's attention any longer. With that in mind, I went right to the item I felt had the greatest chance for success. Green peas! |
| |
| Not having to deal with the whole "eat it before dad has a chance to test it" on this item, Ava quickly selected a perfect sample and placed it into the water. Right away I could feel our prospects for success being greater as the pea took almost 3 seconds to gently descend to the bottom. |
|
|
| |
| But sunk is sunk, so we proceeded to with the countdown. 3,2,1 plop! Just like before, the whole vase went cloudy as the initial reaction between the alka-seltzer and water occurs. However when the cloud disappeared, there was a pea levitating about 3/4ths of the way up the glass. Eureka! As previously theorized, the bubbles adhered to the pea and lifted it to the surface. Ava and I were so excited that we made up a "floating pea dance" right there in our chairs. But to confirm these results as "science", we had to replicate the results... which we did in three more attempts with up to 4 peas at once. Ba da ding! |
| (and just because I'll be asked this later if i don't mention it now, the answer is NO - this experiment does not change the taste of the pea.) |
| |
 |
| test 3 : pineapple chunk |
| Having tasted sweet success, it was now time to move onto something a little less certain... chunks of fruit. |
| |
| Right away I could sense that this particular test would not go well as this was the only item you could actually feel the weight of in your hand. However, knowing that most of that is water weight, I decided to go ahead and give it a try. |
| |
| To increase our chances of success however, I threw in dos alka-seltzer tablets thinking that more bubbles would provide more lift. A pretty safe "scientific assumption" I thought. |
|
|
| |
| But despite the added horsepower, when the cloud cleared the pineapple chunk was right where we had left it. At first I was a little disappointed, but when I started to look more closely, you could see that the hundreds of bubbles that did stick were having an effect as the chunk moved around the bottom a little bit. Still, we were nowhere near blowing chunks. |
| |
 |
| test 4 : craisins |
| Now while I have no idea when these crasins were "invented", I do know kids love them. Looking like something between a date and a raisin, these craisins are actually dried cranberries with fruit flavors injected into them. |
| |
| Not fully knowing how that injection would chemically react to the alka-seltzer, I asked Ava to stay at arms length on this one while I hid behind the safety of the camera lens. |
| |
| So with a 3,2,1 followed immediately by a stop, drop and roll, we watched this hybrid raisin race to the surface |
|
|
| |
| like a beach ball. I was shocked. How could something that looked that much like a raisin react so differently? My guess is that it either has something to do with the injection onboard crasin, or the fact that we contaminated the raisin samples when we sucked the sugar off of them. I'm not sure, but test 4 results do make me want to rush out and pick up some Sun Maid "control group" raisins. I'll keep you posted. |
| |
 |
| test 5 : pineapple w/ lego assist |
| Having successfully tested 4 out of 6 items (between 4 and 5 we mixed in a blueberry), I was beginning to think that there was something to this. Still I was bothered by the pineapple chunk. It was so close to doing something that I just had to try it one more time... but with a twist. |
| |
| Having determined in an "off the record" test that lego men float, I decided to place the pineapple chunk into the arms of our loyal sidekick to see if the added buoyancy would help our cause any. And while I knew that this would compromise the integrity of the entire experiment, I was ok with it since we were about to dump a half |
|
|
| |
| dozen alka-seltzer into the cylinders well. It was now clear that this was no longer just about science... this was personal. I wanted to get that chunk to the surface even if it exhausted my entire costo size box supply of indigestion relief. |
| |
 |
| So with a 3,2,1 we were off as one by one we dropped in the alka-seltzer when, about ten seconds into the third plop, we started to have a little lift-off. |
| |
| Not wanting to miss our window of opportunity, Ava and I went for the jugular and tossed in the remaining pellets. A huge FIZZ FIZZ later, and before the cloudy water had even subsided, we had a pineapple chunk toting lego man break the surface of the water and darn near leap over the edge of the glass! |
| |
| Our efforts had led to a resounding success, but for only a brief moment |
|
|
| |
| as, seconds later, the bubbles that had once clung to our hero burst upon breaking the surface and consequently doomed the duo back to the bottom. Clearly, if ever the rv.com science department had needed a high-speed HD camera, it would have been for this moment. So for the most part, you are going to have to just "trust me" on this one. |
| |
| To conclude, after 6 tests and over 30 alka-seltzer tablets, I can say with certainty that there are very few things that cannot be raised through the suitable application of copious amounts of alka-seltzer. |
| |
| I hope you enjoyed this edition of Testing 1,2,3. And until next time, please feel free to email me with any questions, suggestions or challenges that you would like me and my staff to take. |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
|
 |
|
| |
- 2/27/2007 11:57:10 PM