Mad Scientist

The super short version of this story is that we are now out of white vinegar.

Fortunately, the empty vinegar bottle is due to a legitimate science experiment from preschool and not from Ben pulling the bottle out of the lazy susan in the corner cabinent and shattering it on the tile like he did last year.  While the smell was overpowering, it's true that vinegar really does make an excellent household cleaner.

This is "V" week at Caroline's preschool, so the class made their own volcanoes.  Caroline proudly carried her volcano into the car yesterday after school and told me three things.  To quote her, "1) Volcanoes are made of rock.  2) They have magma inside.  3) Hot lava flows out of the volcano."  I was fairly impressed since it's usually pretty tough to get her to tell me much about her day except maybe what was for snack.

Her mini-volcano is made of molded clay and painted brown, green, and red.  There's a little plastic dixie cup at the top where the lava comes out.  To get the volcano to erupt you mix baking soda and vinegar.  (It's not a splashy eruption -- more of a fizzing over the sides -- but enough to excite the preschool crowd.)  For extra drama you can add a few drops of red food dye to the mixture to make it look like lava.  (I thought this was an excellent use for that expired red beet-based food dye that has been sitting in my kitchen cupbard.)   

I don't have any pictures of the actual eruptions since I was too busy keeping Ben from dipping his hands into the "hot lava".  It was hilarious to watch Caroline add the ingredients over and over and over again.  She insisted upon having the baking soda in a bowl with a spoon and having the vinegar in a small glass so that she could fully simulate classroom conditions.  By the 10th or so mixture she was laughing a little manically -- a mad scientist in action.  And then, we ran out of vinegar.