acids/bases

I remember one of my closest friends in college telling the story of her mother and cabbage soup. When her parents were first married, her mom made a recipe for cabbage soup which they loved. She wanted to make it again, but couldn’t find green cabbage so she made it with red. To their surprise, it turned out bright blue.

Elmer’s Disappearing Purple Glue is a standard school supply in most K-12 classrooms. Many students are familiar with its bright purple color that disappears as it dries on their school projects. 

Lightning exhibits some of the most fascinating phenomena on planet Earth.

Can you solve this new Chemical Mystery? (Video 1)

In a previously published work¹, I described an activity. In part it goes:

A debate broke out among students about red velvet cake during a recent chemistry class. We were studying natural acid-base indicators, and a student claimed that cocoa powder was an acid-base indicator.

Co-Authored by Dean J. Campbell*, Carley Steres*, and Kaitlyn Walls* *Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois

In Chemical Mystery #19,¹ a yellow liquid is poured into a test tube, and the liquid turns red. When a white sold is added to the red liquid in the test tube, the liquid turns blue.

Classroom demonstrations have long been an approach used to convey information in chemistry courses. The intent is to help student learning by providing physical examples to illustrate concepts described in class.