Electric Custard

So this morning I failed at making a hovercraft from a 'It's Chico Time' CD and some card... Turns out that CD really is totally useless!

So to make myself feel better I made a tasty snack of - ELECTRIC SLIME! Actually I'm not totally kidding about the 'tasty snack' part - I lasted about half an hour before my curiosity got the better of me and I tasted a tinsy bit of it... It wasn't tasty.. At all!

Electric slime is made out of cornflour and vegetable oil which is mixed together until it is the same consistency as cream. Apparently you are also supposed to spill cornflour all over the work top, or maybe that's just me?

Rub a balloon until it is charged. It becomes positively charged because you have knocked some of the negative electrons out. Then bring a spoonful of delicious dripping slime close to the balloon. It's consistency will thicken and it will be pulled towards the balloon. This is because the slime is made of cornflour which has lots of particles. The particles are coated with an insulating liquid so the charge can't leave the particle so instead the charges are just pulled more to one end. The positive end of one particle will attract the negative end of another particle. This makes the slime more attracted to itself and therefore thickens. The slime is also attracted to the positive balloon.

In the picture above there is some slime in the cup which was also attracted to the balloon - it looks like it has climbed out of the cup!! Unfortunately it wasn't quite as awesome as that!

My lovely mum volunteered as my glamorous assistant and helped me to video the experiment. Its no work of art and I still have no idea why I was whispering but it kind of shows what happened! 

Actually, now I think about it this is actually quite a good practical for demonstrating induced dipoles for Chemistry!