What looked like a simple and playful practical lesson turned out to be a little more technical than the team thought!

This lesson helps students understand the power of stoichiometric ratios and how we can manipulate the explosion in a methane rocket using different volumes of oxygen and methane. It’s also a nice re-introduction to some common lab procedures like generating oxygen and displacement. 

First the team had to work out how much of each gas we needed and they determined a oxygen to methane molar ratio of 2:1 was the best course of action having balanced our reaction equation.


Above, Sky slowly drops hydrogen peroxide onto manganese dioxide to generate the oxygen we need.


And here Rijana and I are discussing our game plan for getting the right amount of methane into the bottle. 


And it took some very serious faces to ensure accuracy! 

When our bottle was full we set it up on its launch pad and ignited the gas inside. When Jack gets chance he’ll upload the slow motion video of our rocket launch too. 

Thank so much Jack, Rijana and Sky for staying behind and demonstrating this to Y9 too. They loved seeing where their science lessons could take them. 

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