Sunday, June 19, 2011

Silly Putty or Flubber Science

Since our Borax Bouncy Balls didn't really bounce, I thought I would help the kids make silly putty.  I remember making it once before, and I remember it bouncing when rolled into a ball.  I also remember it picking up images from the newspaper, just like the store bought variety.  Unfortunately, I did that in my pre-blogging days and I have no idea which recipe I used. So, I tried a recipe from The Ultimate Book of Kid Concoctions.

We began by mixing 2 TBSP Elmer's glue with 3 drops food coloring.


Then, we put 1 TBSP liquid starch in a separate cup.  Next, we slowly poured the glue/food coloring mixture on top of the liquid starch and let it stand for five minutes.


The next step is to knead the mixture until it becomes putty.

We tried this twice, but only got slime.  My original thought was that we used too much food coloring, but it didn't make a difference when we used less.  We waited and kneaded and waited and kneaded, but it never solidified.


After some research, I read that some people have better results with white glue rather than school glue.  I'm not sure what the difference is, and I was actually surprised to find a bottle of white glue in our glue stash, so we tried it.


Again, we waited and mixed and waited and mixed, but we never got anything resembling putty that could be kneaded.  It was thicker than the school glue mixture though.  Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....

Then I came across a recipe for Funny Putty at McCormick (the spice and food coloring people) that called for equal parts of glue and starch (instead of the two parts glue to one part starch recipe we used), so I added more starch to each of the mixtures we still had sitting on the counter.  It didn't quite make silly putty (in the traditional sense), but C and R had a great time playing with it.  I was SO happy to turn this mess into something they could enjoy because they were a bit frustrated and disappointed with the earlier results.





This mixture reminds me of Flubber or the slime in a can you can buy in stores.  I have to warn you, this stuff makes a mess and it was EXTREMELY DIFFICULT to clean up!!!!!!  I won't even post pictures of the mess because they may cause my husband great distress!

There is a recipe for silly putty using Borax.  Maybe we will try that next.  I'll keep you posted.

Have you had success making silly putty?

For more science related posts, check out Science Sunday hosted by Adventures in Mommydom.

12 comments:

Julie said...

I have not made silly putty and after this post, I'm not sure I'll try in the future! LOL! C has brought home slime he made in school, though. We actually have a baggy of it in our refrigerator at the moment. It looks similar in consistency to what you ended up with here. Although I haven't had issues with cleanup.

Amy A @ Child Central Station said...

Sorry to hear you've been having so many challenges with this stuff!!! Hopefully it will work out better soon. We make the slime/gak version all of the time. We even had a slime off with a variety of recipes: http://childcentralstation.blogspot.com/2011/02/great-slime-off.html

I hope you have better luck! If you make the type of "slime/gak/putty" you tried without any color, I think it pulls ink off of newspaper quite well.

April said...

We made Gak one time and we had sooo much fun with it. We did it with Borax but then someone had left a comment about it being dangerous so I threw it all out intending to make it again with liquid starch and I never did :( I posted about it though

Andrea said...

It still looks like a lot of fun! Sorry it was so troublesome!
~Jada Roo Can do

Kelly said...

You are so brave, but fun! I havent' tried this with the kids yet. Sounds like I should wait a bit longer and take it outside. Thanks for sharing this though, it's helpful to get hints.
Little Wonders' Days

Unknown said...

Part of science is finding out why something didn't work as it should...and making the best of it! Looks like they still had some fun! We like making the gloop stuff with cornstarch and water. Stopping in from Science Sunday!

Jessy

Ticia said...

Not yet, but it's been on my list of things to do sometime....... We didn't have much luck with the borax one you originally did, but I think that was a measurement thing.

An Almost Unschooling Mom said...

We got it to work, last spring, with extra starch.

http://almostunschoolers.blogspot.com/2010/05/homemade-silly-putty.html

Jenny said...

What a mess! We made the silly putty or flubber with just glue and water and it worked out really well! It's kept well too.

One tip: If you use food coloring, make sure you play with it on a covered surface. Abby was showing it to her Dad and the next day I found the counter was all pink. It came out with soft scrub though.

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

I am glad you posted the warning :) It's funny how sometimes the recipes or experiments that don't work out teach all of us more than those that do.

Sherri said...

thanks for the clean up note...I like to know what I am getting myself into...since usually it is a big mess! Looks like fun!

Susana said...

This post made me laugh!! I like the pictures too. Please email me the pics of the mess if you can find them easily, I would love to see them :-). No, I have not had success making silly putty and after cleaning up our mess from it last year, I don't think I'm trying anytime soon. Not until Jack and Jesse are a bit easier to manage :-).