Skip to main content

Is it an acid or a base?

For this experiment, we used a red cabbage powder to determine if regular household chemicals or liquids were an acid or a base. You can make your own red cabbage powder. Click here to get instructions. You can also just do what I did and buy it offline. Red cabbage powder is the purple color indicator that scientist use to determine and measure whether something is an acid or base and it contains a natural pH indicator.








My oldest had fun doing this experiment with things around the house that she started grabbing more and more things from our cabinets to test it on. It's not every day that you hear your high schooler say, "This is cool," when it comes to science.




So we tested it on things like creamer, dish soap, vinegar, baking soda (dissolved in water), sugar (dissolved in water), lemon juice, etc. If it made the color pink or red, it was a base. If it made the color purple, it was neutral. If it made the color blue or green, then it was an acid.

It was a pretty simple experiment and you can take it a step further and get those pool strips that test water pH within a pool and actually try to indicate what the pH would be.





  

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Behavior Chart

I found a behavior chart image online that I really liked because it detailed, but I couldn't find a website to print one. So I made my own. I did this in photoshop and if you would like to print one for yourself you can here . After I printed it, I hung it in a picture frame and can use dry erase markers to check off.

Solar System Bracelets

Well, it was that time again - to learn about the solar system, galaxies, how we get our seasons, the moon phases, etc. You can check out our Space Unit that we completed a couple years ago, when we covered space. Meant To Teach: What's out there in space??? Also, here is the solar system we completed a couple of years ago. Meant To Teach: Solar System Complete This time I decided to do something different with the girls. I might add, it was also much easier than our solar system above. I decided to do solar bracelets this time!

I Gave Up Control

I've not posted very much this year, probably because this year we've been so relaxed with our schooling and the girls have been very independent that there has really not been much that I could think to write on. Plus, with my girls being so much more independent I've been working more with my photography business. My oldest also has her first job and we just stay super busy. However, in looking back where I was a year and a half ago to today I started to think about our journey and where it's gotten us. In previous posts, you will have seen where we stopped doing school completely. My kids didn't stop learning, but the textbooks stopped. We gained SO much from that 7 months that are beyond all textbooks. You can read on our previous journey on the links below. We Quit School Child Led Learning in JUST the First Week What If We Trust? There's Value in Being Relaxed Today I decided that I wanted to talk about more than what this journey did with our s