I have seen mothballs that move up and down in water. I would like to make this for a Christmas display. Does anyone know how to do this?
Nina from Snow Camp, NC
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Dancing Mothballs
Equipment: A glass, mothballs, baking soda, vinegar, teaspoon.
Method: Fill the glass almost to the top with water. Add four teaspoons of baking soda and stir well
until it is completely dissolved. Add four teaspoons of vinegar to the mixture and stir well. Carefully
put four mothballs into the mixture and watch carefully.
Expected Result: You will see the mothballs moving up and down the glass.
Explanation: You will see bubbles of gas forming on the mothballs and this will make them float to
the surface. Some of the bubbles will burst when they reach the top. Then you will see the mothballs
sink slowly. The vinegar and baking soda when mixed together produce carbon dioxide. Bubbles of
this gas stick to the rough surface of the mothballs and act as floats.
Thank you I have been wanting to know for years how to do that
Do you know the amounts? Did she then put mothballs in the mix for a snow globe effect?
Does glass matter what size I want to use a fish bowl
Does it matter if it is a fish bowl
No, it doesn't matter. My mother used a large fish bowl. She put a plastic snowman with an empty "sack" on his back in the bowl, filled the sack with marbles to weight it down, and made this wonderful little display that my brothers and I loved every Christmas. I never knew about the vinegar/citric acid and always wondered how she did it.
You vinegar and citric acid
My mom always coloured the water green or red
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What is the proportion of vinegar, to bicarbonate of soda, to water?
By Ann F
First of all mothballs alone are highly toxic to living beings and the environment in general and secondly they are highly volatile (look up the ingredients they are made of)! It's bad enough to use them at all but mixing them with any other chemicals, including vinegar, is like playing Russian Roulette. :-o
Yet another thing we lived through in the '50s.
Hahaha!! It's amazing that we made it past infancy (yes, our parents put us down on our tummies to sleep & we didn't suffocate!) They also smoked and drank throughout their pregnancies & I don't know anyone who suffered because of it (I'm talking moderate drinking here), although there probably were some who did. No seat belts, airbags or car seats either (if you were lucky they'd have a few big pillows for you to sit on so you could see out the car window;))
My mother did this every year until her death at the age of 93. I have continued the tradition and will until I die. I am now 72 with no health problems.
