He launched his talk by talking about lab safety and discussed the current class topic of chemical and physical changes. He challenged students as to the state of matter of a tomato, then froze it in CO2/water and shattered it. He showed how CO2 gas (made from dry ice and water) could put out flames and made a flame using nothing more than a battery and fluffy steel wool!
He lit magnesium and extinguished with CO2, made a precipitate with silver nitrate, blew and bent glass, made thin drawn pipettes and created foam with soap/water to challenge students to think about what state of matter foam might be. This began a great discussion of how foam was a hot area of research right now- NASA has a product that is so light it floats in air but can withstand the blast of a blow torch!
