How to Make a Volcano

Video Transcript

"Hi, Colin Kilbane and I'm going to show you one way to make a great volcano for a science project. Now the things you're going to need: you're need need hot and cold water. You're going to need parental supervision on this one because you're going to using be using very hot water here. You're going to need a cup to mix it in, you're going to need a thermometer and that's because we're going to use some fast active, highly active yeast. You need a pan, you need some sort of bottle. Now a pop bottle works great. And you're going to want to cover it with a variety of different things. You can put make paper mache. You can just use sand. You can use minimally expanding foam, but that you need, must use in a well ventilated area. Blow up foam around it, and then carve away when the foam is dry. You'll have to aerate that cause that does have some noxious fumes, so make sure you got a parental supervision there. I got my scissors. I've got a little cup to mix in. I've got my funnel again. I've got a little bit of red food coloring for the lava, and I've got hydrogen peroxide, and you're also going to need a little bit of dish soap. Let's get started. Got our yeast here. I'm going to cut it open. Now check the back of the package and it says this yeast needs water that's between a hundred and twenty and a hundred and thirty. Now that's awful hot. That will scald you. So I'm going to put that in here. Now I've got the water just right here. Just a little above a hundred and twenty here. Going to let that wake up. Takes a few minutes. Now we're going to put hydrogen peroxide, this is three percent hydrogen peroxide. Pour a bunch in there. Now we need it to be red right? 'Cause it's lava. A little bit of food coloring, some red lava. One of my favorite secret ingredients is simple dish soap. You're just going to put a couple drops of dish soap in. Once again, mix it up. Now we're going to do a bio-chemical reaction here. Hydrogen peroxide breaks down into water and oxygen but it does it very slowly. Now the yeast have an enzyme called peroxidase. Now hydrogen peroxide kills, kills cells, but if a cell has a peroxidase, that little enzyme that splits this up into oxygen and water, it can protect ourselves. Now we have that, but bacteria do not, so that's why when you put it on your cut, it froths up, that's your body defending yourself against the hydrogen peroxide. The bacteria can not. Now yeast is not a bacteria. It's a euchariotic organism and the weary euchariotic organism, so we both have a peroxidase. And now that peroxidase is going to go. Now I'm mixing it up here. The yeast should be nice and woken up, and we're ready to do our volcano. Our volcano erupts. And that's how we can build a volcano."