 I'm Ryan and I'm a Yale 2020 intern at the San Francisco Public Library. Today's STEM project will be about baking soda and vinegar reactions. This project will require baking soda, vinegar, and a clear plastic bottle. Some optional materials are food coloring and glitter. Also, make sure you have an open space and the experiment is best to do outdoors. Now let's head outside. First pour some baking soda into the bottle. At this point you could add glitter and food coloring, but this is optional and I personally did not add these things. As you can see I spilled some baking soda so try your best to get it all into the bottle. For the next step pour vinegar into the bottle and watch the reaction. You could have different proportions which will cause different reactions. The more vinegar you add the more it will fizz. Now let's get into the science behind why this is happening. Vinegar and baking soda are both made up of elements which are then made up of atoms. Examples of elements are oxygen, hydrogen, iron, and so many more. And the periodic table is full of elements. Baking soda is made up of one sodium atom, one hydrogen atom, one carbon atom, and three oxygen atoms. It is also known as sodium bicarbonate and its chemical formula is NHC03. Vinegar is made up of acetic acid and water. Acetic acid is made up of four hydrogen atoms, two oxygen atoms, and two carbon atoms. The chemical formula is CH3C008. Why does it react this way? This happens because vinegar is acid and the baking soda is a base. First hydrogen ions in the vinegar react with the sodium and bicarbonate ions in the baking soda. This results in two new chemicals called carbonic acid and sodium acetate. The second reaction is decomposition reaction. The newly created carbonic acid starts decomposing into both water and carbon dioxide gas. I hope you enjoyed this episode of STEM Challenge Yourself. Be sure to check out the rest of the STEM Challenge Yourself videos by the SFPL librarians and the Yale interns. Bye!