What is hydrogel?

Fun Or­beez balls are just hy­dro­gel! Let’s have a look :)

Safe­ty pre­cau­tions

Per­form this ex­per­i­ment only un­der adult su­per­vi­sion.

Equip­ment

• hy­dro­gel gran­ules;
• wa­ter;
• bal­loon;
• plas­tic bot­tle;
• fra­grance;
• glass con­tain­er;
• stick­er.

Step-by-step in­struc­tions

Pour the hy­dro­gel gran­ules into a glass con­tain­er and add wa­ter. Over the course of 6-8 hours, the beads ab­sorb the wa­ter and swell into tran­scu­lent balls. If you add fla­vor­ing or es­sen­tial oil to the wa­ter, the wa­ter beads will act like an air fresh­en­er. Fill a plas­tic bot­tle with the hy­dro­gel and trans­fer it into a half-in­flat­ed bal­loon to make an anti stress toy! Place a stick­er on the bot­tom of a glass con­tain­er and cov­er it with col­or­less hy­dro­gel. The im­age dis­ap­pears – but if you just add wa­ter, the balls be­come com­plete­ly in­vis­i­ble and you can see the im­age again!

Pro­cess­ de­scrip­tion

Hy­dro­gel is a poly­mer ca­pa­ble of ab­sorb­ing and re­tain­ing a large amount of wa­ter. Most of­ten, it is sodi­um poly­acry­late. Wa­ter mol­e­cules are rel­a­tive­ly small and can soak into the in­ter­molec­u­lar spa­ces of the hy­dro­gel. Hy­dro­gel is also ca­pa­ble of re­leas­ing wa­ter over time, as the wa­ter evap­o­rates from its sur­face. Hy­dro­gel is wide­ly used in con­tact lens­es, soil hy­dra­tion, and for var­i­ous oth­er pur­pos­es. En­joy more cool ex­per­i­ments with a MEL Chem­istry sub­scrip­tion!