Sodium Silicate Polymer Lab

(Our Thursday sodium silicate ball)

This Tuesday we made a polymer using Elmer's glue, water, and Borax. It ended up this flubber-y substance was quite mucilaginous. Our first polymer bounced to an average height of about 9 centimeters and 7 centimeters after chilled for 10 minutes. Today (Thursday), we have created a polymer out of Sodium Silicate (commonly known as glass water) and Ethyl alcohol. When we added the 3 mL of ethyl to the 12 mL of sodium silicate, it congealed into this crystalized substance. We ran it under some water to mold it into a ball then dropped it from a height of 30 centimeters with the rebound averaging 19.3 centimeters. We then chilled it for 10 minutes, but when we got to the fridge and found our ball had been swiped, we took the only ball left (smaller, and disgusting ball considering it had unknown hair on it. . . .) and ran the test again with ten drops. We were satisfied that our ball was a different one, but we ended up finding the table that had and took our original ball back. Since our good old ball was warm by that time, we chilled it for ten more minutes and ran the test again, averaging 17.3 centimeters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAyJ-UfZab4
(Click above to see a collage of all the filmed drop tests)

SIMILARITIES & DIFFERENCES
I'm a personal Doctor Seuss fan (did you know his birthday was yesterday?) so I am dubbing our first ball "Thing One" and our second polymer ball "Thing Two." Both Thing One and Thing Two had a whitish-clear color (at least Thing Two did before Dean showed his apparent ineptitude at catching the ball and let it bounce about the floor a ton of times and turn it gray with who-knows-what), were smooth, and both bounced to a certain degree. But Thing Two bounced higher (by about ten centimeters for each test) and was also a firm solid whereas Thing One was more of this flimsy, mucus-like flubber. Not to mention Thing Two was prone to crumble (note: DO NOT roll a sodium silicate polymer on the table, it WILL fall to pieces) while we couldn't poke a finger through Thing Two because other pieces would tear off first.

WHY DO CARBON & SILICON POLYMERIZE/CARBON & SILICON SIMILARITIES
I'll admit it, I had to Google this question (which, if you were wondering, was "what are the similarities between carbon and silicon that may contribute to their remarkable ability to polymerize?"). Carbon-based polymers are basically the organic ones while the silicon-based ones be the man-made type. From what I can tell, they both have more open, flexible molecular chains and both form covalent bonds. The polymers both create have stronger bonds and more flexible bonds and are resistant to temperatures and outside conditions.

WHEN DID YOU FIRST REALIZE THIS CHEMICAL REACTION?
I'd say we started to figure that the chemical reaction began to take place when the sodium silicate began to turn a filmy white (we couldn't tell if it was the top or bottom or all of it that turned that filmy color. We were for sure of the reaction when we started stirring the mixture and the sodium silicate began to crystalize. That was when we knew for sure.

THE MYSTERIOUS LIQUID
When Amber was forming the ball a clear and thin stream which we figured was the alcohol because it was of a similar scent (word to the wise, do NOT smell ethyl alcohol), color, and density. Had we really wanted to test if our hypothesis was true, we could've burned the liquid because we know (and the directions had warned) that alcohol burns.

COMPARE AND CONTRAST
Well, since we had to stoop so low as to take the disgusting, little ball that was left, things we noted as differences were that 1.) the ball we took had hair! (eww) 2.) Many of the balls were smaller. 3.) The average for the faux, chilled ball was 17.63. 4.) The average difference between chilled and unchilled was about 4 centimeters higher when chilled. Our results (with the real ball) was that we had about 2 centimeters lower when we had cooled it in the fridge.