Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Science Party: Bubble Slime


Here is Slime #2: Bubble Slime.

A different recipe than the Regular Borax Slime, but this one again has just two ingredients: liquid starch (we bought ours at Walmart for about $2) and glue. Like regular slime, you can use either clear or white glue. 

This slime was a little more tricky to get right; you'd be able to blow a bubble regardless, but too much starch would make it too plasticky to support the bubble long enough to enjoy it and too much glue would make the slime too sticky and soft to handle.

Here are our proportions:
  • 1/2 cup of clear glue
  • About 2/3 cup of liquid starch (straight from the jug)

Embellish the clear glue before adding any starch - we used glitter

and food coloring

and swirled it to make a lovely emulsion of pixie dust.

Start adding the liquid starch, bit by bit. You will end up using almost all that 2/3 cup. At first, it's phlegmy and jelly-like.

Then it gets sticky and stretchy,

and stretches indefinitely when you pull on it.

As soon as it is manageable (it will still be sticky), knead it, adding liquid starch bit by bit until it begins to separate from your fingers. leaving them clean. It should form a soft mass like this,

which you can handle and squeeze

and stretch slowly, but which breaks cleanly when you tug it quickly apart.

Now it is ready for blowing. It will still be droopy, so support it in your palm while you stick a straw in it

holding the slime around the straw like a collar to prevent the air from escaping there. Blow to make a bubble.


Here is Kate playing with a bubble she blew. They can get really big!

Updated Nov 18 to add: Forgot to include the link to the website where we got our inspiration for this activity. Gah. My apologies. Here it is. This is what happens when I sit on my posts for two months and then panic-mass-edit them for autoposting. 



5 comments:

  1. Ooohh... that looks like fun! You're so brave to do all that with a big bunch of kids, though! :)

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    1. GG: And these were the saner experiments, too -the ones that could be contained a single plastic cup (until we chose to lift the gunk out, I mean). I'm glad we didn't attempt the other ones that foamed all over the place or exploded or oozed like punctured caterpillars. Ooh! That was my Inner Coward speaking.

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    2. Eeuw! The visuals you've put in my head - the caterpillar!!!!! Heheh.

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  2. Wow! I had never seen this and I think it is so cool. My three kids will enjoy this greatly. Thanks a lot!

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  3. I remember buying some stuff that you could do this with as a kid. How cool that you can make it! Definitely trying this with the kids!

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