Batasan Hills National High School

IBP Road, Batasan Hills, Quezon City

CONTROLING WATER AND MAGIC SOIL

(Pepper, Detergent and Water Experiment)

by

Aira Mae E. Aloveros

12 – STEM 1

Passed to:

Mrs. Sharon Aliman

Chemistry Teacher
 PREPARING THE MAGIC

You will need: Steps on conducting the magic

-Black pepper and Face Powder (Magic soil) 1. Pour water into a plate or bowl.
2. Sprinkle pepper evenly across the surface.
-Water
3. Put a drop of dishwashing liquid on your
-Dishwashing liquid finger and then dip it into the pepper and
water the pepper will rush to the outer edges
-Plate or bowl
of the dish.

WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN IN THE MAGIC?

Most of the pepper flakes should have darted to the sides of the pan, and some of the
flakes should have fallen to the bottom of the pan. It may have looked like the soap was chasing
the pepper flakes away.

CONCEPT BEHIND THE MAGIC

The pepper flakes float and didn’t sunk in the water because it is hydrophobic, meaning
that water is not attracted to it. The pepper can't also be dissolve in the water because of that
reason. The main concept behind this magic is surface tension. Surface tension allows some
insects and other small animals, which are denser than water, to walk across its surface without
sinking. Surface tension is a physical property equal to the amount of force per unit area
necessary to expand the surface of a liquid. It is the tendency of a fluid surface to occupy the
smallest possible surface area. Surface tension is a principal factor in capillary action. The
addition of substances called surfactants can reduce the surface tension of a liquid. For example,
adding detergent to water decreases its surface tension. That is exactly what happened in this
magic/experiment. Water molecules stick together. They line up in a certain way that gives the
top of the water surface tension and because pepper flakes are so light, and hydrophobic, the
surface tension keeps them floating on top.

The reason why pepper shoots to the sides when soap

touches the water is that the soap is able to break
down the surface tension of water—that’s part of
what makes soap a good cleaner. As the soap moves
into the water and the surface tension changes, the
pepper no longer floats on top. But the water
molecules still want to keep the surface tension going,
so they pull back away from the soap, and carry the Retrieved from http://www.rsc.org

pepper along with them. This concept also works with

olive oil or hair spray.
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The deeper reason behind is the property of detergent molecules as amphiphilic, meaning they
have a hydrophobic and a hydrophlic end. A common component of soap is something like
sodium stearate. The charged end has attractive ion-dipole and hydrogen bonding interactions
with water. The nonpolar tail end has only dipole-induced dipole interactions. The tail portion
of the molecules will not dissolve into the water since this would require breaking of hydrogen
bonds between water molecules in exchange for the weaker dipole-induced dipole interactions.
As a result, the detergent molecules spread readily across the surface with their charged head
groups in the water and their tails sticking out, pushing the pepper out of the way.

The forces experienced by a water molecule at the surface

and on in the bulk liquid are different, and this is how surface
tension works. A water molecule at the surface is attracted to its
neighboring water molecules including the ones that are below
and to either sides, but there are no other water molecules that it
can interact above the surface. As a result, this molecule at the
surface tends to be pulled into the bulk of the liquid and thus
minimizes the surface area of a liquid. A detergent, destroys
the surface tension of water. Soap is a molecule that has one end
polar with the other end non-polar, which means one end
Retrieved from
attracts to water
https://water.usgs.gov/edu/graphics/surfacet
ension-diagram.gif
and the other
end is attracted
to oil or grease, and this is how soap makes oil
and water to mix and clean grease off of dish.
This occurs because detergent literally interferes
physically with water molecules and weakens
hydrogen bonds between them. The detergent
Retrieved from http://butane.chem.uiuc.edu/pshapley/Enl
molecules arrange themselves to form a ball-
shaped cages, called micelles, in water. The
"water-loving" outside of the micelle interacts strongly with water and this reduces the water-
water interaction at the surface. Other substances that interact strongly with water have the same
effect on surface tension. The forces experienced by a water molecule at the surface and on in the
bulk liquid are different, and this is how surface tension works. A water molecule at the surface
is attracted to its neighboring water molecules including the ones that are below and to either
sides, but there are no other water molecules that it can interact above the surface. As a result,
this molecule at the surface tends to be pulled into the bulk of the liquid and thus minimizes the
surface area of a liquid.

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