Why does alka seltzer fizz

Again time how long it takes the tablet to disappear. How long does it take the tablet to disappear in the colder water? What temperature change is required to increase the reaction time by a factor of two make it as twice as fast?

What about decreasing the reaction time by a factor of two? If there is a greater surface area that is, a tablet is broken up into more pieces to expose more surface , does the same amount of tablet result in the reaction happening faster or slower?

To do this, you will use an empty container, such as a tall jar or clear plastic one- or two-liter bottle. Fill it with about two inches of water, add five drops of food coloring and then fill it at least three quarters full with vegetable oil before adding one quarter of an Alka-Seltzer tablet. You could repeat this activity using your homemade lava lamp at colder and warmer temperatures. Because it contains oil, you should have an adult help you devise a safe way to warm or cool the contents of each container.

How does the bicarbonate reaction look in the homemade lava lamp? Observations and results Did the Alka-Seltzer tablet dissolve much faster in the hot water compared to the cold? Were there a lot more bubbles produced initially in the hot compared with the cold water? After the Alka-Seltzer tablet was added to the hot water the tablet should have quickly dissolved, taking some 20 to 30 seconds to do so, depending on the exact temperature.

After the tablet was added to the ice-cold water it should have taken much longer to dissolve, with most of the tablet disappearing after about two to three minutes, but with some bubbles still apparent after six minutes or longer. In the hot water the tablet should have more vigorously produced bubbles than in the cold water. The higher the temperature, the faster the molecules move—and the more likely it is that the bicarbonate will contact hydrogen in just the right way for the chemical reaction to occur and produce carbon dioxide bubbles.

This activity brought to you in partnership with Science Buddies. Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. You may even be able to hear the bubbles as they pop. We can monitor the formation of carbon dioxide by hearing the fizz and seeing how long it is produced. Alka-Seltzer reacts with an acid to make carbon dioxide gas. When you added the tablet to the vinegar or water, you heard fizzing and saw bubbling.

If the reaction is going faster, then it will take less time to finish and will fizz more vigorously. The speed of a reaction depends on the number of collisions between molecules. The carbon dioxide forms when two key ingredients in these tablets, citric acid and baking soda sodium bicarbonate , dissolve in water and then randomly collide into each other in just the right way.

The sodium bicarbonate must collide with the acid to make the carbon dioxide gas. When surface area is increased, the citric acid and sodium bicarbonate dissolve better and faster in water. When these dissolved particles collide, the chemical reaction happens. More dissolved particles leads to more collisions and a faster reaction. In your trials, when was the surface area the largest? Did the rate go faster? Temperature also affects the rate of a reaction.

When temperature is increased, molecules move faster, so it is likely there will be more collisions in the same amount of time. Think about a class of students entering a room. If they walk, there is less chance that they will bump into another student, but if all the students are running into the room it is very likely there will be some collisions between students.

In your trials, did the hot or cold water finish first? Using what you learned about changing the rate of chemical reaction, what would you do if you wanted to make the reaction with Alka-Seltzer happen even faster than your fastest recorded time? What could you try if you wanted to make it happen slower than your slowest recorded time? Veronica I. Jaramillo, Ph.

Fast or Slow Chemistry Makes It Go! Activity — Chemistry Goes Pop! Catalytic Converters to the Rescue! That's One Fast Reaction! Meg A. These include a change in color, the production of a gas or solid, and of course a change in chemical composition.

The starting chemicals before a reaction are called the reactants , and the chemicals that are produced are called the products. The reaction in this activity involves using sodium bicarbonate and citric acid to produce water and carbon dioxide. The tablets contain sodium bicarbonate NaHCO 3 and citric acid. Once in solution, the two chemicals can then react according to the reaction listed above.

The chances of this happening are better when the tablet is crushed into more pieces since the molecules have more opportunities to collide and when the temperature is higher, since the molecules are moving faster.

In this activity, students will experiment with the reaction between Alka Seltzer tablets and water in different conditions. By changing temperature and the surface area available for reaction, students will begin to see what factors chemical engineers can control to get the desired result.

This activity introduces the reaction used for the Alka Seltzer Rockets activity, so it is typically performed before building rockets to understand the nature of the reaction before using it.

Before the experiment, ask students to hypothesize what will make the reaction go the fastest and what makes them think that. This can be anything, but try to seek answers with specific regard to the variables being changed in this activity.