"Fiery Foam" experiment

Make fiery foam at home!

Reagents and equip­ment:

• wa­ter;
• liq­uid soap;
• gas from cig­a­rette lighters;
• rub­ber or sil­i­con hose;
• large bowl;
• cig­a­rette lighter.

Step-by-step in­struc­tions

Pour wa­ter into a bowl and dis­solve liq­uid soap in it. Start to bub­ble the gas through the soapy so­lu­tion un­til a suf­fi­cient amount of thick foam forms. Stop the bub­bling. Wet your hand and place a lit­tle of the foam on it. Bring a lighter up to the foam – the foam quick­ly flares and burns, with­out burn­ing your hand. (Don’t do this near the bowl with the re­main­ing foam, so that it doesn’t catch fire).

Pro­cess­es de­scrip­tion

The gas used in cig­a­rette lighters is a high­ly flammable mix­ture of propane and bu­tane. If it is passed through soapy wa­ter, a foam forms, with bub­bles filled with com­bustible gas. If you wet your hand first, you can set fire to this foam on your hand. The propane-bu­tane mix­ture burns quick­ly, so it won’t burn the ex­per­i­menter’s hand.

Safe­ty pre­cau­tions

Avoid burns – make sure your hand is wet! Wear pro­tec­tive glass­es. Don’t con­duct the ex­per­i­ment near flammable sub­stances and ob­jects. Fire-ex­tin­guish­ing equip­ment should be at the ready. Fol­low gen­er­al safe­ty rec­om­men­da­tions. Chem­i­cal ex­per­i­ments must be car­ried out in full com­pli­ance with the leg­is­la­tion of your coun­try.

Warn­ing! Sub­stances of this ex­per­i­ment are tox­ic and high­ly dan­ger­ous for your health. Do not try this at home. Only un­der pro­fes­sion­al su­per­vi­sion.