Conservation of Mass Lab Investigation

The first lab that we did was the pop rocks one. We went through all the procedures and started the lab. We poured pop rocks into a balloon and put that balloon over the top of a 20oz soda bottle. Our soda happened to be Sprite. We attached the balloon to the lid and poured the pop rocks in. The reaction didn't start for about 2-3 minutes after the pop rocks fell into the soda. After a few minutes the balloon started to fill with gas. It started to blow itself up. It ended up maybe about 3 or 4 inches tall and about 1 1\2-2 inches wide. The overall process of the gas into the balloon seemed very slow compared to other groups. Our balloon also seemed a few inches smaller than all the other groups balloons. That could have had to do with the type of soda because almost every group had a different soda type. If our soda was a type of cola maybe the balloon would have been filled more with the gases. Also to make the balloon fill with more gases we tried to shake the bottle and the balloon grew maybe a half an inch or maybe a full inch larger.

After the first lab we had to wash out our soda because our empty bottle had a lid to big so the balloon wouldn't fit over it. In this lab we had to take 50mL of vinegar and pour it into a bottle. Next we poured a half a teaspoon of baking soda into a balloon which we then put over the bottles lid. The reaction only took maybe 15-20 seconds. The gases went into the balloons must like the pop rocks lab. There seemed to be more gases coming out because the balloon was much bigger. Although our balloon may have been bigger, but we couldn't get it to hold so we lost an average amount of the gases so that could have been a variable in the size of the balloon. Another possible variable could be that we had to use the same bottle for both labs. There still could have been small amounts of pop rocks in the bottle that may have interfered with the lab itself. I also realized that still other groups had much bigger balloons. We were not sure how they got them like that. We tried the shaking process like in the last lab, but it had no affect on the balloon at all. Other groups may have had more success with the shaking then us.