What you need:
Sugar, baking soda, sand, fuel such as rubbing alcohol, ethyl alcohol or lighter fluid, a plastic tray, aluminum foil, a ceramic bowl, a lighter or a matchbox, a plastic cup, adult supervision
What to do:
1. Place the plastic tray on a table and cover it with aluminum foil.
2. Fill the ceramic bowl with sand and pack it completely. Keep the bowl in the centre of the tray.
3. Soak the sand in the bowl with the fuel of your choice. Make sure you have an adult with you while you do this.
4. In a plastic cup, mix four teaspoons of sugar with one teaspoon of baking soda.
5. Pour this mixture to form a mound over the sand in the bowl.
6. Using the lighter or a match, set fire to the mound.
What happens:
In a few seconds, a black snake emerges from the mound and just keeps growing longer until all the fuel is exhausted!
Why?
Here there are three things happening:
First, the sugar on the outside of the mound burns using the oxygen from the air. This produces carbon dioxide and water vapour.
Second, the sugar that is inside the mound in the mixture does not have access to oxygen. So it just burns and turns into ash or carbon. Third, the baking soda (chemically known as sodium bicarbonate) burns and breaks down into sodium carbonate, more carbon dioxide and water vapour.
The carbon from the sugar and the sodium carbonate from the soda are black in colour. And they get fluffed up by the expanding hot gases (carbon dioxide and water vapour) giving you the growing black serpent.
Picture Credit : Google
