The girls and I turned our kitchen into a chem lab last week for a bit of experimentation. I found a chemistry kit for them for Christmas and so we put away the school books for a day last week and just spent the day learning about chemistry. We started by discussing some of the rules for safety and gathering all of our test substances. Earlier in the week, I had bought the items we didn't already have on hand, like glucose tablets, borax, etc.
Seth was in charge of a lab for a few years at his last job, so it was good to be able to use his experiences as an example for a few things. For instance, how chemistry is useful for identifying unknown substances. We studied how substances react with water; how to determine if a substance is a base or an acid using pH strips; using reagents such as citric acid to assist in identifying substances (Avery loved watching the carbon dioxide gas form when we combined substances); and observing the various ways that differing substances behave when heated (another favorite experiment for the girls). I think all in all, we performed eight different experiments.

