Okay - a Winter experiment and a bit of a rant!

You've all seen, I am sure, on Facebook and other places, the little meme that ges around each winter about how fun and easy it is to make "Christmas Decorations" by filling balloons with water and food coloring, setting them out to freeze and peeling off the balloon and "ta-da!" a lovely thing that looks like a transparent glass ball, brightly colored, emerges.

I figured yesterday would be the perfect time to finally try this - balloons obtained, and below-zero temperatures expected, nice snowbanks to rest the balloon in so I don;t end up with a flat bottom to it ...

No one tells you the following:

1. Finding normal balloons can be frustration - I finally discovered some in a back corner of CVS after checking supermarkets, convenience stores, etc.

2. Filling the balloon with colored water is actually tricky. I figured, "Water, then add the food coloring" - bad idea, as once I dis-attached the balloon from the faucet, of course the water wants to escape from it, not let any food coloring in!

Pause to clean kitchen, the red-tinged water hit the counters, floor, coffee maker, sink, and cabinets. How it missed my mostly white shirt I will never know. And yes, it takes extra cleaner - 409 works - to clean up without leaving everything tinged pink.

3. Try again, add food coloring to the empty balloon, then water. Did not fill as much as it could be, fearing a more explosive repeat of result #2.

4. Set balloon in snowbank. Snow is below freezing by definition, right? Wait a couple hours. It's dang cold out, this should work. I used cold water from the sink. Check - maybe an eight of an inch is frozen, which collapses when I poke it.

5. Wait overnight, and into the next afternoon. Notice I had some air in the balloon, so will end up with a flat spot anyway.

It is still not frozen solid! And this is a small balloon - maybe filled to a 4 inch diameter! And I checked, it has been below freezing all day, and was even down to -4F last night for a while!

How long is this gonna take?

As with all those "craft projects" touted as simple and fun, this has been not simple, nor quick, and we will see if fun actually even happens!

I'll keep you posted.

Oh goodness, thought those sorts of things only happened for me!

I AM surprised it has not frozen, what physics law is THAT?!

Karen, there's gotta be something in the food coloring that won't freeze - next thing to do is study chemistry. LOL!

Can't wait to see the result! :D

Btw, years ago when I was feeding stray cats in the yard, I was advised to put a tiny bit of salt in the water, so it wouldn't freeze. Could it be that there's salt in it?

It is in the process of freezing, but there was still a liquid care - maybe an inch or so of the water was frozen. There's no salt in the food coloring, there is a bit of propylene glycol in it, but the food coloring itself is mostly water, and there's maybe 6 drops of it in over a quart (I'm guessing) of water!

I tried those balloons. Not a good idea. :rolleyes: A lot of mess and all I got was a few tiny colored ice balls out of it!:D

A couple of thoughts:

Slight impurities can have a significant effect on the freezing point of water, and your tap water isn't pure by any stretch of the imagination.

Snow is insulation, so the part of the balloon that's in the snow isn't getting the ambient air temp.

Water expands as it freezes, and in the expansion creates gas pockets (insulation).

Well, tomorrow I will try taking the rubber/plastic off of it! And yeah, I didn't bother to use the bottled water for this so, I supposed impurities could be the cause. I'll take a picture of the unwrapped result, in any case.

Tomorrow is predicted to be above freezing, but I doubt that'll have much effect either way!

I remember seeing this and wondered how they got the balloons to be as big as they were. Garden hose attached to sink = more water pressure?

Bring 'em up here - they'd freeze in about 5 minutes today, I swear! :eek:

Looking forward to seeing results.

I don't think I would've tried this experiment, I'm not very good at doing stuff like that anyway. Let us know if it finally freezes and words, then you can send us a picture, good luck Karen.

Took the balloon off today, but as it was above freezing, there was some melting, that got on our hands - stuck in in the freezer - tomorrow's gonna be warm out, but when the tempos go back below freezing Tuesday, I'll take a picture during the day!

This sounds like something I'd do LOL :rolleyes: There are plenty of DIY projects involving fish tanks that ARE SO TIME CONSUMING and FRUSTRATING and plain just not work. LOL I have never tried this but now I don't think I will. Does it at least look pretty?

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Originally Posted by Alysser

This sounds like something I'd do LOL :rolleyes: There are plenty of DIY projects involving fish tanks that ARE SO TIME CONSUMING and FRUSTRATING and plain just not work. LOL I have never tried this but now I don't think I will. Does it at least look pretty?

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I'll take a picture of it Tuesday, when it'll be well below freezing again and I can take one out side! It looks interesting, at any rate!

Karen ~ Good luck!
I once spent a week making ice luminaries to line our driveway for our annual Christmas party. Bobcat laughed at me the whole time.
They looked great. This isn't our photo, but they turned out something like this: http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/73...07d0b13e06.jpg

The night before the party, I took them out of our deep freeze and set them out on the deck. Figured they'd be safe, after all it was December in Alaska, right?
Around midnight, a Chinook (warm winter wind) came down from the mountains. Bobcat felt bad about laughing at me when we awoke to find them melted down to nothing. :(

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Originally Posted by kuhio98

Karen ~ Good luck!
I once spent a week making ice luminaries to line our driveway for our annual Christmas party. Bobcat laughed at me the whole time.
They looked great. This isn't our photo, but they turned out something like this: http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/73...07d0b13e06.jpg

The night before the party, I took them out of our deep freeze and set them out on the deck. Figured they'd be safe, after all it was December in Alaska, right?
Around midnight, a Chinook (warm winter wind) came down from the mountains. Bobcat felt bad about laughing at me when we awoke to find them melted down to nothing. :(

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Aww, well, those look lovely, and I sure yours were every bit as pretty! I, being a born and bred New Englander, I am well accustomed to not being able to count of the weather remain any particular way for long! But I imagine you were quite surprised!

Okay, here are the "result pictures" - more of an interesting experiment than a beautiful ornament, as you can tell:

Here's a close-up, resting on a paper plate from when I brought it inside a few days ago, just set it on that and stuck it in the freezer after I took off the outer balloon:

http://PetoftheDay.com/talk/attachme...6&d=1389300957

Then a bit further away from it so you can start to see the odd pattern of the food coloring versus clearer water:

http://PetoftheDay.com/talk/attachme...7&d=1389300968

When I went to put it down, I dropped it - hence the mark on the show to the right, then dropped some birdseed on it. The stray red bits of stuff in the snow are actually from the fruit of the tree, not the balloon experiment, by the way.

http://PetoftheDay.com/talk/attachme...8&d=1389300980

And from furthest away, you can see the odd almost colorless stripe - note that I could not have done that on purpose if I tried - just squirted some food coloring into the balloon then added tap water all at once.

http://PetoftheDay.com/talk/attachme...9&d=1389300993

Not exactly the "easy, pretty decoration" promised by the people who post it on Facebook and the like! And I know it will make a mess as it melts, which is why I set it on the snow, to be able to see the pattern as it spreads ...

The squirrels, by the way, were pretty wary of it, but eventually succumbed to the seeds' allure!

http://PetoftheDay.com/talk/attachme...0&d=1389302412

I saw this project and the pictures of it they looked so pretty and almost sparkling. Of course I can't try it living here in California. :rolleyes:
I still think yours looks pretty neat anyway! :D

Probably if you took time to polish the orb, it would sparkle, but the surface of a balloon is NOT perfect/

Just ordered some stuff for next year's Christmas science experiment. :p

It was shinier when first taken out of the balloon, granted.

But I did expect the color to be more evenly distributed! The flat spot it is resting on is where the gas bubble formed on the top of the balloon as it was laying in the snowbank as the ice froze.

Not bad Karen, it looks pretty nice to me. I give you lots of credit for trying, well done :)

That's quite the orb :) Sounds like a real pot of trouble but I have balloons here and if this crazy weather doesn't give I just might give that a try.... maybe one green and one red...to put near the bird feeder to scare the squirrels away, they can empty 3 large tubes in less than a week , the bluejays are quite the scavengers also.

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Originally Posted by Asiel

That's quite the orb :) Sounds like a real pot of trouble but I have balloons here and if this crazy weather doesn't give I just might give that a try.... maybe one green and one red...to put near the bird feeder to scare the squirrels away, they can empty 3 large tubes in less than a week , the bluejays are quite the scavengers also.

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Hee hee - and maybe if you just move them around a bit every couple days, they will continue to be "scary!" to them!

Interesting potential variations on the experiment would be figuring out if different colors or kinds of food coloring take longer or shorter to freeze ... or if adding in things like glitter would help or hurt the freeze time ... although Paul swears any purveyor of glitter has my picture taped behind the counter as warning not to sell me any ... so someone else may have to try that one! Still have no idea why that one slice has so much less color than the rest of it ...

I just came back hoping to see photos and there they are! I think this is a great first try, Karen, a big red almost football shape! And the pic of the 2 squirrels trying to sort out this new thing is just what I love! He hee, they sure are curious, aren't they? And tempted by the seed.

Great work, Karen! It is larger than I expected, especially after you wrote about it not freezing and such. Very interesting experiment!

LOL! At least your experiment brought us all joy!!! :D Maybe if you tied a string onto it after it was filled and tied shut and hung it from a tree branch it might freeze better???? Have no clue, just wondered. Thanks for sharing. At least you enchanted some squirrels with it. :love::love:

Hmm, add that to the list of experiments to try if we get another extended cold stretch! It is warm and raining today, and now what's left of it is sitting in grass instead of snow, and it is almost half the size - we've had a lot of rain.

By late afternoon, it was down to less than a third of its size, and I am betting when the sun comes up tomorrow, there will be no trace of it after all the rain and warm temperatures we had today. The rain washed away all the snow underneath it as well, so I have no record of how the coloring spread as it melted!

That was one reason I haven't been able to try this experiment out----our below igloo weather turned suddenly and we've had rain and wet snow for the last 2 days and the week is supposed to be no colder than -6C so nothing will freeze. If I get antsy enough I might try it and tie a string to it and suspend it in the freezer somehow, the chest freezer not the stand up. A litlte afraid the whole thing lets go in there, would hate to be trying to get the inside white again...:D

Yeah, there is no trace of it now, one think we can always depend on is the weather will change!