For fun times, cover a cookie sheet in baking soda, put vinegar colored with food coloring in a squeeze bottle, and let your kid go to town.
At Aurora’s insistence, she and her father took turns pouring the vinegar. They made all sorts of sound effects as the yellow eruptions bubbled before them. My favorites were an enthusiastic “WHOA!” and a extended guttural “grwull.”
So while the carboxyl group of the vinegar’s acetic acid (CH3COOH) was busy becoming an acetate ion (CH3COO-) by donating a proton, H+, to baking soda’s sodium bicarbonate’s (NaHCO3) bicarbonate ion to form carbonic acid (H2CO3), which decomposed into water (H20) and carbon dioxide (CO2), which effervescenced out of the remaining sodium acetate (CH3COONa), I was busy enjoying my daughter laugh and my husband smile.
