Do you love playing with slime? I bet you do. Slime is fun to play with. It is neither too solid, nor too liquid. You can squeeze it, stretch it, or even make balls with it. But the best part about playing with slime is of course, making it. You don’t require too many ingredients, but the outcome will be surprisingly perfect. Do you want to learn how to make slime at home? Let us move on to the experiment.
What we need
Borax powder
White craft glue
Food coloring (optional)
Water
Measuring cup
Mixing bowl
Procedure
- Fill water in the measuring cup.
- Add one tablespoon of borax powder to the water, and stir well. Borax should completely dissolve in water.
- Transfer the white glue to the mixing bowl. Dilute the glue by adding water. (If you are using a small bottle of white glue, empty the entire glue into the bowl, fill it up with water, and add it to the bowl) Mix the glue and water thoroughly.
- If you wish to have a colorful slime, you can add a few drops of required food color to this mixture of glue and water.
- Now is the time to get your hands messy! Add the borax solution to the glue solution little by little, and mix with your hands.
- As you mix, you will notice a change in the solution. The mixture will start turning thick and gooey.
- Keep adding borax solution, while kneading the mixture at the same time. After a while, you will find that the mixture doesn’t stick to your hands. When the mixture has acquired the consistency of bread dough, you have successfully become an expert slime maker!
What we learn
So we have learned how to make slime at home. It was not very difficult, was it? Now, let us understand more about slime. As we said in the introduction, slime is neither solid, nor liquid. In fact, it has the properties of both! Slime is a non-Newtonian fluid, which means that its viscosity can change based on the force applied to it.
So how did we transform the white glue solution to slime by adding borax? White glue is made of polymers. A polymer is made up of a chain of repeating molecules. White glue has long polymers which slide over one another. This makes the glue liquid, but viscous.
When we add borax solution to white glue solution, it causes the linking of polymers in the glue. It is the chemical, sodium tetraborate, present in borax which causes this cross-linking. Sodium tetraborate dissociates into tetraborate ions which, on dissolution with water form borate ions. These borate ions form bonds with the glue. As a result, the glue polymers lose some of their flexibility. The more we mix and knead the slime, the more these polymers become linked.
Did you enjoy making slime? If you wish to explore further, you can check out the many ways to grow crystals from the Growing Crystals Science Fair Project.
