Ivory Soap Experiment

A bar of Ivory soap was included in the recent Influenster #TLCVoxBox I received and reminded me of an experiment I had meant to try for some time. A friend actually gave us a bit of Ivory soap as part of a "Mustache Bash" birthday party to try the experiment a couple of years ago. I set it aside for a rainy day and darn if it didn't get misplaced during our move. But now we had an entire bar to play with.

Supplies

• bar of Ivory soap
• microwave safe plate (we used a paper plate)
• microwave

We unwrapped the bar and I asked Dylan to uses his senses (well, not taste - that wouldn't be nice!) to inspect the Ivory soap. We looked at it reading off the letters, touched it and smelled it.

Then I carefully cut about a quarter of it off stashing the rest in a plastic bag for another day. We put our piece onto a paper plate and put it into the microwave.

We microwaved it on high for about 20 seconds and it quickly began to expand! As I opened the door to look closer, the "cloud" of Ivory soap deflated a bit, but was still much greater in size than the small piece we had started with.

We carefully removed the soap from the microwave and began to inspect it. Looking at and feeling the changes. It was larger and softer in texture. If you squished a bit between your fingers it turned into flakes.

We carried the entire plate upstairs to the tub and got his bath prepped. Then it was play time.

Dylan squished it and placed handfuls in the water observing how they floated.

Lots of good clean fun! Thanks Influenster and Ivory Soap for helping us play and giving us an easy weeknight kids' craft.