“Home Slimer” experiment
How to make neon Slimer from “Ghostbustbusters”
Who hasn’t dreamed that a character from our favorite film would come out of the screen and join us in real life? In this experiment, we’ll show you how to make Slimer from “Ghostbusters”!
Safety precautions
Don’t let the slime get in your mouth. After playing with slime, you should wash your hands. Store the slime in a clean jar with a lid in a cool place.
Warning! Only under adults supervision.
Reagents and equipment:
- saturated polyvinyl alcohol solution (200 ml);
- 1% fluorescein solution;
- 10% sodium tetraborate solution (10 ml);
- bowl;
- spatula.
Step-by-step instructions
The easiest recipe for slime Pour 200 ml of polyvinyl alcohol solution into a bowl. Then add a little sodium tetraborate solution and fluorescein solution. Stir until a homogeneous viscous mass forms. After a few minutes, the mass thickens and turns to slime!
Processes description
To polyvinyl alcohol, a solution of sodium tetraborate Na₂B₄O₇•10Н₂O, also known as borax, is added. When it is stirred, the mixture gradually thickens and turns into a viscous mass – soft rubber which can be molded and stretched. Sodium tetraborate in an aqueous solution hydrolyzes with the formation of an alkali and weak boric acid.
The boric acid then connects chains of polyvinyl alcohol together. A cross-linked polymer is formed, which is much more viscous and slow-moving. The slime has the properties of a non-Newtonian fluid. This is a fluid which sometimes behaves like a solid body, and sometimes like a fluid. These fluids are usually made from large polymeric molecules which do not have very great “adhesion”, and so the molecules can slide past each other quite freely.
