How can you make slime in 5 minutes?
1 experiment and 2 slimes
All kids love to play with slime. It’s like a big piece of chewing gum, only for your hands. It’s like plasticine, but it doesn’t stick to your hands, doesn’t leave stains on surfaces and doesn’t keep its form. In our experiment we’ll show you how to make this famous toy.
Safety precautions
Don’t let children put the slime in their mouths. Wash your hands after playing with slime. Keep the slime in a clean jar with a lid, in a cool place.
Reagents and equipment:
- PVA glue (200 ml);
- food coloring (2 g);
- sodium tetraborate (5 g);
- shaving foam (100 g);
- shampoo (15 ml);
- baking soda (1 g);
- boric acid (1 ml);
- distilled water;
- glass bowl.
Step-by-step instructions
The simplest recipe for slime
Pour 100 ml of PVA glue into a glass bowl. Then add a little food coloring and mix it to a uniform mass. Add 10 ml of sodium tetraborate solution and mix the resulting mass. After a few minutes, the mass will thicken and turn to slime!
Recipe for fluffy slime
Squeeze shaving foam into a glass bowl. Add shampoo, PVA glue, a little baking soda and boric acid as a thickener. Thoroughly mix the resulting mass. After a few minutes, you will get fluffy slime.
Processes description
PVA glue is an emulsion of polyvinyl acetate in water, with plasticizer and special additives. To the PVA, a solution of sodium tetraborate Na2B4O7•10Н2O is added, also known as borax. When this mixture is mixed together, the liquid gradually thickens and turns into a viscous mass, a soft rubber which can be formed and stretched with your hands. Sodium tetraborate in an aqueous solution hydrolyzes, with the formation of an alkali and weak boric acid. In the alkaline solution, the transformation of PVA takes place, it loses acetic acid, and polyvinyl alcohol forms.
Boric acid then links chains of polyvinyl alcohol together. A cross-linked polymer forms, which is much more viscous and less mobile than the original polyvinyl acetate (PVA). The slime that forms has the properties of a non-Newtonian fluid. A non-Newtonian fluid is a fluid which sometimes behaves like a solid body, and sometimes like a fluid. A non-Newtonian fluid can spread out and flow, or can be solid and bounce. The reason for this result is that these fluids are usually made from large polymeric molecules between which the “adhesion” is not very great, and these molecules can slide quite freely over each other.
The recipe for fluffy slime also uses PVA glue, shampoo for a pleasant aroma, shaving foam as the fluffy base, and instead of sodium tetraborate, baking soda with boric acid. When this mixture is mixed together, the liquid gradually thickens and turns into a viscous mass.
