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How to Make a Fast and Easy Volcano
I have lots more volcano projects here including my super fast poster board volcano if you need a volcano in a hurry
The volcano shown here in the photo on the left was made by a web visitor. (Kenny T. of Texas) My thanks to Kenny for the great volcano and the idea was his to try using just dough to make a volcano. As you can see it came out great!
OK! Lets Make this volcano
Materials Required:
These are the basic Materials:
- Bottle, can be snapple, plastic soda, just about any size
- A Cardboard box
- Scissors, Tape,
- A Plastic bag
Ingredients for making the dough:
- Six cups of Flour
- Two cups of Salt
- Two cups of Water
- Four tablespoons of cooking oil
About this mixture of dough. These amounts give you a pretty good amount of dough but you may have to make another batch depending on how big you want your volcano to be!
Make the Volcano Shell:
This is an easy method that uses materials around the house. The Dough Method
In a bowl mix six cups of flour, two cups of salt, four tablespoons of cooking oil and two cups of water. You mix this up real well and it comes out a nice doughy material which will be perfect for your volcano shell. You can tinker with the ingredients a bit to get a consistency you are comfortable working with. Typically its good to add a little more water as you see fit.Once this dough is a nice consistency you can use it to make your volcano. Simply pile it and form it around the bottle until it is the shape you want.
You can also add some paint or food coloring to the dough if you want it to have a nice volcano like color. I prefer to keep it the natural color so I can paint it later.
Here is what you do:
Start out with your box and your bottle. Use a corrugated box because it is nice and strong. Just about any bottle will do, plastic or glass. The box should be taller than the bottle.
Put the bottle in the box and cut out the box just like shown in this picture. The slanted part in the back, behind the bottle will be where you can draw a nice diagram of the volcano and how it works.
Cut a hole out under the bottle. This will be so you can easily take the bottle out for cleaning and reuse of the volcano.
Now cover the bottle with a bag. This will keep the plaster or dough from adhering to it. Makes it much easier to get in and out.
Now all you have to do is start putting the dough right onto the box and around the bottle! It's as simple as that. This picture here is another view of Kenny T's volcano.
Be creative with it. Notice how Kenny made his volcano nice and bumpy. This gives it a great look. It's a volcano that is erupting.
Once it dries you can paint it up. Paint the volcano one color and add a little green at the bottom then once these colors dry you can add the erupting colors at the top of Red, Yellow, and Orange.
Some Quick Tips: This volcano is made of dough! So make sure you paint it to seal it or the eruption may soften and melt the dough. Of course you might want that to happen!!
Now for the Ingredients for Making this Volcano Erupt
- Take the bottle out of the volcano and fill it almost full with water
- put 4 or 5 drops of detergent right into the water
- Add Two Tablespoons of Baking Soda to the water
- Put the Volcano over the bottle so it is in place and ready to go
- Pour some vinegar right into the volcano bottle and watch it Erupt!!
The Even faster, even Easier volcano! Includes a fact sheet you can print up!!
I also have another volcano project you might be interested in. This project doesn't use any paper mache or plaster so it is much less mess, easier and faster to make and it looks great. It uses posterboard to form the cone of the volcano. The Easy Posterboard Volcano Project
Here are a couple more pictures of Kenny's Volcano
Looking for some Great Volcano Kits?
How to Make a Chemical Volcano: And Other Mysterious Experiments
In recent years, the fascination among kids with chemistry sets has seemingly dwindled. And after all the terrorist bombings worldwide, many parents are probably reluctant to have their kids messing around in the basement with the test-tubes and chemicals that used to be de-rigeur in adolescent development. But here's a delightful book of simple chemistry experiments that any kid can do with household compounds like baking soda, vinegar, and whatnot -- perfectly safe, and highly educational as well (and the volcano seems like it would be very cool). And, I was pleased to find out that it was written by a 13-year-old! Recommended.
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