10 Amazing Chemical Reactions

Mixing baking soda and vinegar is a popular way to see what happens when chemicals react. But, plenty of other experiments demonstrate cool chemical reactions, several of which are easy to produce in a school science lab.

The 10 experiments below result in some of the most amazing chemical reactions.

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Thermite and Ice

Thermite burning on grass — CaesiumFluoride / Wikimedia Commons / CC by 3.0

The thermite reaction is an example of what happens when metal burns. What happens if you perform the thermite reaction on a block of ice? You get a spectacular explosion. The reaction is so stupendous that the "Mythbusters" team tested it and verified it was real.

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Briggs-Rauscher Oscillating Clock

Dropping yellow liquid into blue liquid — rubberball / Getty Images

This chemical reaction is amazing because it involves a cyclic color change. A colorless solution cycles through clear, amber, and deep blue for several minutes. Like most color change reactions, this is a good example of a redox reaction or oxidation-reduction.

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Hot Ice or Sodium Acetate

Hot ice cubes — ICT_Photo / Getty Images

Sodium acetate is a chemical that can be supercooled, meaning it can remain a liquid below its normal freezing point. Initiating crystallization might be the most amazing part of this reaction. Pour supercooled sodium acetate onto a surface and it will solidify as you watch, forming towers and other interesting shapes. Sodium acetate is also known as "hot ice" because the crystallization occurs at room temperature, producing crystals that resemble ice cubes.

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Magnesium and Dry Ice Reaction

Magnesium burning with dry ice — Graphene Production / Flickr / CC BY 2.0

Magnesium produces a bright white light when ignited—this is why handheld sparkler fireworks are so brilliant. While you may think fire requires oxygen, this reaction demonstrates that carbon dioxide and magnesium can participate in a displacement reaction producing fire without oxygen gas. You get brilliant light when you light magnesium inside a block of dry ice.

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Dancing Gummy Bear Reaction

Gummy bears — Géza Bálint Ujvárosi / EyeEm / Getty Images

The dancing gummy bear is a reaction between sugar and potassium chlorate that produces violet fire and a lot of heat. It's an excellent introduction to the art of pyrotechnics because sugar and potassium chlorate are representative of a fuel and oxidizer, such as you might find in fireworks. There's nothing magical about the gummy bear. You can use any candy to supply the sugar. You may get more of a sudden immolation than a bear tango, though, depending on how you perform the reaction.

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Fire Rainbow

Abstract Diagonal Red Blue Sparks - Background Party New Year Celebration Technology — ThomasVogel / Getty Images

When metal salts are heated, the ions emit various colors of light. If you heat the metals in a flame, you get colored fire. While you can't simply mix different metals to get a rainbow fire effect, lining them up in a row produces all the colored flames of the visual spectrum.

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Sodium and Chlorine Reaction

Water & salt,sodium chloride on wooden surface. — mirzamlk / Getty Images

Sodium and chlorine react to form sodium chloride (table salt). Sodium metal and chlorine gas don't do much on their own until a drop of water is added to get things going. This is an extremely exothermic reaction generating a lot of heat and light.

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Elephant Toothpaste Reaction

Foam exploding from a glass container — JW LTD / Getty Images

The elephant toothpaste reaction demonstrates the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide, catalyzed by the iodide ion. The reaction produces a ton of hot, steamy foam that you can color or stripe to resemble certain toothpastes. Why is this called the elephant toothpaste reaction? Only an elephant tusk needs a strip of toothpaste as wide as the one produced by this amazing reaction.

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Supercooled Water

Ice shaped like a water bottle — Momoko Takeda / Getty Images

If you chill water below its freezing point, it doesn't always freeze. Sometimes it supercools, which allows you to make it freeze on command. Aside from being amazing to observe, the crystallization of supercooled water into ice is a great reaction because almost anyone can obtain a bottle of water to try it out.

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Sugar Snake

Sugar cubes stacked on top of each other — Tetra Images / Getty Images

Mixing sugar (sucrose) with sulfuric acid produces carbon and steam. However, the sugar doesn't simply blacken. Rather, the carbon forms a steaming tower that pushes itself out of a beaker or glass, resembling a black snake. The reaction smells like burnt sugar, too. You can produce another interesting chemical reaction by combining sugar with baking soda. Burning the mixture results in a safe "black snake" firework that burns as a coil of black ash but doesn't explode.

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Helmenstine, Anne Marie, Ph.D. "10 Amazing Chemical Reactions." ThoughtCo, Sep. 2, 2024, thoughtco.com/amazing-chemical-reactions-604050. Helmenstine, Anne Marie, Ph.D. (2024, September 2). 10 Amazing Chemical Reactions. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/amazing-chemical-reactions-604050 Helmenstine, Anne Marie, Ph.D. "10 Amazing Chemical Reactions." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/amazing-chemical-reactions-604050 (accessed December 22, 2024).