Thomas crawled into my bed the other night after a long day at camp and said, “Can you get me some dry ice and a couple of film canisters?” God, I love this kid. He had made rockets at Lego Camp that day and wanted to try it at home. Then he said, “Can we write about it on the blog?” Angels singing.
Here is what you will need:
1. Dry Ice
We got this at Publix super market.
2. Film Canisters
These are harder to come by. Thomas suggested that we look at our local antique store. (I am not even going to comment.) I called my friend Beth. She has everything.
3. Water
4. Construction paper rocket
The kids made these. They took a sheet of construction paper, cut it to size and rolled it up. They taped fins on the bottom. Then they slid it over the film canister.
How it all goes down:
Basically you put a small amount of dry ice and water in the film canister, shut the lid, attach the rocket and BOOM, off it goes. This sounds easy , but it isn’t. We never really got the hang of the timing and the actual amounts of dry ice and water. But, hey, this is an experiment, right? So just keep trying. The cap of the film canister does fly off with a good amount of force and it hurts when it hits you, so make sure that you stand back and don’t get hit in the eye.
Dry ice is risky. If you touch it with your bare hands, it will actually burn you. We used hot pads from the kitchen and winter gloves.
Here is Thomas showing off his rocket.
A rolling pin is useful for breaking the dry ice into small pieces.
After a while, we gave up on the rockets and just played with the dry ice. The kids had a great time and it was cheap entertainment. I loved it. Thanks, Thomas, for the idea.
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