Cabbage Litmus Paper

First off....we got much needed lab coats.

Even Auntie Awesome has one

And lab coats are important because science is messy! And we learned today a little smelly.

Today we talked about acids and bases.

The first thing we needed to do was make an indicator solution.  We took purple cabbage and cut it up and boiled it to make cabbage juice.

We let the cabbage boil for a long time. And then we had to get the juice out. So we took the boiled cabbage and squished out all the juice. It was very purple and very smelly.

We then took strips of paper towels and dipped the paper towels in the juices, and let those dry. Those became are litmus strips. We collected different liquids from around the house to test whether they were acids or bases.

We discovered that the paper turned pink when things were acidic, and green when they were a base. We had a lot of acidic things in our kitchen. Dr. Pepper, tea, guava, lemonade were all acidic. Baking soda and water is a base. Next we tried bleach, which is such a powerful base that it turned a very yellow green. The milk didn't really seam to change, or the plain water.

Jack: I got to do basketball for the first time between making the juice and doing the experiment. It was awesome, I almost scored!

Mina: When we were squishing up the cabbage, it smelled really stinky!

Anna: I do not like the smell of cabbage!