Great Balls of Fire!!!
Boom!!! 
This experiment must be done with an adult!!!
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Have you ever seen pictures of a grain storage center (elevator) that has exploded? Why would ordinary wheat or corn be clasified as a hazzardous material? This experiment should answer that question. Get the following materials, and that includes adult sepervision!!!
1. An ordinary soda straw - A better device is a kitchen baster (It looks like a large eye dropper).
2. Some Corn Starch, or ordinary baking flour, better yet both.
Place ~ 1/20 oz ( 1.5 grams) of dry corn starch in your straw. Blow it at a gas kitchen burner (better yet a bunsen burner) away from any people or flammable objects!!! I can't express how careful you must be with fire!!! It can cause terrible injuries and that's why those grain elevator explosions make it onto the 6:00 news. If you do this carefully, it is a great experiment to show how much energy from our Sun gets into the food we eat. The unit of measurement for heat is the calorie, c. This is the amount of energy it takes to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water 1 degree Celcius. Our experiment shows that very little flour, in bread for example, is needed to give off a great deal of energy. Be careful, and keep having fun with Easy Science. E-Mail your questions to our Physicist: Return to Home Page