Yesterday, there was a science fair by the South Shore Science Team at the Quincy Center for Innovation. I had participated presenting our school Science Fair project called The Self Inflating Balloon. My partner, Adam Manter, and I had worked on this project at my school for a couple of months under the guidance of our science teacher.
Being a public event, it was covered by the media and visited by more than 400 people. In fact, a reporter from the Patriot Ledger took my interview and published it in the newspaper. This was quite an exciting experience as I did not know that I was talking to a news reporter. While he was talking to me, I was questioning myself why he is having a pen and notebook while asking all these questions.
I demonstrated the experiment about 25 times and to more than 150 people who visited our project. In fact, for the science fair, we had involved the kids and adults to participate in measuring the vinegar and baking soda. Some kids also got to keep the balloons as gift for participation in the experiment. They were excited that they learnt a new way to inflate balloons for their birthday party 🙂
Let me tell you about our experiment. The Self Inflating Balloon is an example of the Neutralization Reaction between Vinegar (Acetic Acid) and Baking Soda (Sodium Bicarbonate) that forms a salt (Sodium Acetate), water and releases Carbon Dioxide, a gas. I had prepared a Prezi which explains the entire reaction in detail. Please visit the prezi and provide your thoughts.
The Flickr Album for South Shore Science Festival and the Flickr Album for Science Fair at School have the photos of the two events where we presented this experiment. I would like to thank my uncle, Dr. Reji Nair, for helping me understand the chemical reaction and its equation. I want to thank Adam who has been a great partner all throughout the project and we learnt a lot working together. Communication is very important during team work and we have been great at doing that. Our teacher, Ms. Ahearn provided us motivation, help and guidance to approach this fun experiment.
So, what do you think ?