Invite your sweetheart to join you for a bit of experimenting in Love’s Laboratory!
Does your husband love to figure out how things work? Is he constantly tinkering on a project? Or maybe he loves to experiment in the kitchen with new recipes? Well, we have a date that is just up his alley!
To set the scene for this fun date night, I set out this adorable invitation for my hubby to find the day before. It probably didn’t hurt that I paired it with his favorite candy: Skittles!
To start the night off right, serve your hubby this magic elixer. Follow the directions created by Jennifer Sbranti outlined on this page to concoct a drink that changes color before his eyes! To go along with the scientist theme, I prepared the drinks in Erlenmeyer flasks that we had from a prior Halloween party. (Just a tip: the food coloring took a lot longer than I expected to dry in the glasses… about a day!)
Now, for the fun part: conduct a few science experiments! See if your hubby can guess the science behind all these cool reactions.
Here are the 3 experiments we tried out (click on the title to be directed to a page of instructions):
1. Making Clouds from a bar of Ivory Soap:
Our experience: I’ve seen this experiment floating on the Internet but it truly is fascinating to watch the soap transform in a matter of seconds! We tried making different shapes with the ever-expanding cloud! This page has a great explanation of the “science” behind the fun.
2. Creating a secret note with lemon juice:
Our experience: Definitely, be careful with the heat source you are using. The above link recommends using an iron, however, we have also read that a light bulb would also do the trick. James thought he remembered using a candle to decipher a message with lemon juice ink when he was younger. When we tried this approach, we ended up burning a hole through our paper… oops!
3. Constructing a homemade Diet Coke and Mentos geyser:
Our experience: This was by far our favorite experiment! It was easy to conduct and the explosion was truly memorable. We used a small bottle of Diet Coke and only 3 Mentos- can you imagine what would happen with a 1 liter bottle?!
If we had more time, we might have tried making our own slime or baking up a batch of glow in the dark Jello! Need a little more inspiration? Check out Steve Spangler’s newest book that is full of ideas on how to whip up a bit of scientific mystery: Fire Bubbles and Exploding Toothpaste: More Unforgettable Experiments that Make Science Fun
After all the fun in the kitchen, take your experimenting upstairs! Wendy’s post, “Guess the Flavor,” explains one last experiment that you could run with your hubby (wink!) No further explanations necessary!
My husband loved it and thinks I can do magic – you should have seen his face, when his sprite “magically” turned purple!
Great idea, Thank you so much!
That is awesome! So glad you guys had a great time!
my hubby is a chemist, so I will DEFINITELY be using this card!!! Not the experiments so much, since he obviously knows more about them than I would, but I am loving the invitation to experiment!!! 😉
Where did you find the erlenmeyer flasks?? And what size are yours?
Hi Abbey! I believe I ordered them through Amazon a few years ago. They hold 500 mL.
i tried this and it was lots of fun! his favorite was, of course, the guess the flavor, but we enjoyed the whole thing. i did learn that next time i do this i need to be sure to try the experiments first. due to availability of products (i dont live in the states) i looked at steve spangler and got some great experiments for which i had or could get the material. it would have gone muuuch smoother if i had tried em out first, but we did have fun. thanks for the idea, we will definitely be using it again
So glad you had fun with this date idea, Elizabeth! It was definitely a trial and error process with some of the experiments for my hubby and I as well… let us know if you find a fun experiment in the future!