Dancing Oobleck

Oobleck is a great, and kids LOVE it.  My kids are no different.  If you have never made it before Oobleck is a mixture of cornstarch and water.  When played with fast it acts like a solid and when allowed to relax it acts like a liquid.  When we saw a few youtube videos that involved Dancing Oobleck, we decided we needed to take our play to the next level.  You will need to make the Dancing Oobleck a bit thicker than usual.  We used about 2 cups of corn starch and 1 cup of water.

Once your recipe is ready let the kids play for a bit while you set up the next step.  You will need a subwoofer, a thin metal cookie sheet, a MP3 of an audio test tone and food coloring.  Place the cookie sheet onto the speaker of the sub, and pour in the Oobleck.  You can download different test tones and play to see what works best for you.  We used 40 Hz, 50 Hz, and 63 Hz, and found that we needed to turn the volume way up.  We tried a number of different frequencies but these three seemed to work the best.  We did a search for subwoofer test MP3.  There are a number of different sites that you can use.  Before you play the MP3 you will need to place your fingers on the edge of the cookie sheet with gentle pressure.  It took a bit of playing to see what worked the best, but the results were amazing.

We decided to add food coloring to see what would happen.  I love how the colors dance together and you can see all the layers of each color.  This was the kids favorite part!

After we were all done I let the kids play with the colored Oobleck.  They loved it, but a word of caution if stained colored fingers are not your thing.  We giggled at the kids as they tried to wash the color off.  I’m sure they will be sporting grey blue hands for a few days.

Here is a link to a fun list of great experiments that my kids love.