Apologia Chemistry - Experiment 3.1. Can I use BLUE Draino????

[Hoggirl]

The directions say a powdered drain cleaner will work for the experiment (instead of lye which I could not find at Wal-mart). But, in the photo the lye is white, and my Draino is blue. Will this mess up the color change that is supposed to happen in the experiment.

 

Can I reiterate how much I do NOT like science!

[Teachin'Mine]

I would think the blue dye would not be helpful and might skew the results. At least this sounds like one science experiment that will have some benefit when you dump it down the sink. :)

 

Are most of the Apologia chemistry experiments done with household ingredients? Or did you also need to buy lab equipment and chemicals?

[Miss Marple]

Red Devil Drain Opener is what we used. I believe some stores pulled it from their shelves because of the use of lye in making methamphetamine. However, hardware stores and feed stores probably have some sort of lye available. I believe Lowe's has a product Roebic crystal drain cleaner - I don't know if it has a color dye or not.

[Janice H]

I just asked dd about his. She used the Drano Kitchen Crystals Professional Strength, which is blue. However all the color changes described by Wile actually happened in our kitchen; it ends up yellow just like in the book. Hooray!

[Hoggirl]

I just asked dd about his. She used the Drano Kitchen Crystals Professional Strength, which is blue. However all the color changes described by Wile actually happened in our kitchen; it ends up yellow just like in the book. Hooray!

 

I think it was a better experiment using the Drano. We wound up with mostly yellow (which was the reaction with the lye), a thin layer of green on the top (which was obviously something else in the Drano), AND all the little pieces of aluminum turned BLACK! Now, I have NO idea why THAT happened, but it was kind of "cool."

Edited March 8, 2010 by Hoggirl
typo