Instant Slush?

The children like to watch science videos by Grant Thompson, The King of Random. Sometimes they ask to do the experiments. Some of the experiments are quite involved--for instance cutting a fire extinguisher in half to create a backyard foundry or using a fire brick to make a mini arc-furnace. Needless to say the adults in the house are not eager to help out with such experiments. However, I want to encourage the children in their scientific inquiries, so if an easy to do experiment comes along, I try to accommodate them.

A couple of weeks ago Viva (and then Jake) watched a video on how to make magic slushies. The key was to super chilll a plastic bottle of pop to the point that it was still 100% liquid, but when you opened it and poured it out it turned to slush as you poured it--just like magic! 

Finding a small plastic bottle of pop was my first challenge. You can only get name brand pop in plastic pint bottles, so I paid top dollar for a six pack of Sprite. The video told us to shake the bottle and put it in the freezer for 3 hours and 25 minutes--the time varied depending on your freezer. We did that and by two hours we had frozen pop. Over the next two days we put bottles of pop in and out of the freezer trying to find that magic threshold where the pop was super chilled, but not yet forming any ice crystals. We never found the magic time for our freezer. The children lost faith after the fifth attempt, but they enjoyed drinking the half frozen pop!

Bentley steered clear of the entire experiment. I'm sure he was afraid we'd make him give the drink a try.