Make Your Own Volcano

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How to make your very own erupting volcano!

What you need:
• Plastic drinks bottle (2 litres works best)
• A square piece of cardboard
• Red food colouring
• Washing-up liquid
• Baking soda
• Vinegar
• PVA glue
• Paints
• Sellotape
• Lots of newspaper

Once you have all of the ingredients you are ready to make your volcano. Here is a step-by-step guide to help you along the way.

1. Firstly you need to take the lid off the plastic bottle and place the bottle in the middle of the square of cardboard, stick it down using glue or Sellotape.
2. Next you need to build up your rocky volcano. What I suggest is screw up pieces of newspaper and stick them all around the plastic bottle; thickly around the bottom, building up to the top being extra careful not to cover the opening!
3. Next comes the fun bit - getting messy! Using papier mache (newspaper soaked in glue) build over the screwed up balls of newspaper to make the proper shape of your volcano making sure there are no gaps. You may need to do a couple of layers to make sure that your volcano doesn't go all soggy and floppy when it blows its top! Leave this over night to dry properly.
4. Once the papier mache is fully dry you then get to decorate it. You can be as imaginative and creative as you like. You can make trees to go on your volcano and even a little village at the bottom! You could also use straws to make tunnels for the 'lava' to flow through for when your volcano has exploded. Once you have finished you may need to leave it over night again to dry.

When you are happy with how you have decorated your volcano it is time to start the experiment.

5. Being careful not to get any water on your volcano fill the bottle most of the way up with water
6. You then need to add a couple of drops of the red food colouring into the bottle.
7. Next add about 6 drops of the washing-up liquid to the bottle.
8. Then 2 tablespoons of the baking soda.
9. Lastly, make way for a quick escape before pouring in the vinegar and then, run for your life...'cause it's gonna blow!

Hopefully your volcano was a success, if not, empty the volcano and repeat steps 5-9 and as long as you look after your volcano, there's no reason that you can't use it again and again, just be careful when pouring in and tipping out the water.

Now, the reason that your volcano 'exploded' is because you just made a chemical reaction between the baking soda and vinegar. When those 2 ingredients are mixed together they react and make the gas Carbon Dioxide, this is exactly the same gas that bubbles in real volcanoes. The gas bubbles build up inside the volcano forcing the lava to overflow.