Plasma Grape
CAUTION!! Be careful with this!! This experiment uses a knife AND a microwave, so you’re playing with things that slice and gets things hot. If you’re not careful you could cut yourself or burn yourself. Please use care!
We’re going to create the fourth state of matter in your microwave using food. Note – this is NOT the kind of plasma doctors talk about that’s associated with blood. These are two entirely different things that just happen to have the same name. It’s like the word ‘trunk’, which could be either the storage compartment of a car or an elephant’s nose. Make sense?
Plasma is what happens when you add enough energy (often in the form of raising the temperature) to a gas so that the electrons break free and start zinging around on their own. Since electrons have a negative charge, having a bunch of free-riding electrons causes the gas to become electrically charged. This gives some cool properties to the gas. Anytime you have charged particles (like naked electrons) off on their own, they are referred to by scientists as ions. Hopefully this makes the dry textbook definition make more sense now (“Plasma is an ionized gas.”)
So here’s what you need:
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Hi this is Madeline. We tried a purple grape but that didn’t work. Then we tried a green grape and that worked. We tried some more green grapes but they didn’t work, so we took our turn table out and put the plate in the back on the left hand side, and the grapes got turned upside down somehow too. And that was what worked the best. It was a very fun and interesting experiment!:)
Me and my little 6 yr old brother did this . It was awesome! The first time it made a little poof of flame. :]
Awesome! It worked the first time and then it didn’t work. We are doing this afternoon with an after school group. We’ll be trying the cherry tomatoes too.
This didn’t work for us (just bubbles), however I noticed that you commented to move the grape around the microwave, so we will try that tomorrow! My kids will be excited to try it out again. Thanks Aurora!!
Yes, that’s right!
is this the same plasma in plasma tvs?
After we moved the grape to the back of the microwave, it sparked, and it was fun!!!!!!
The ‘bridge’ is the part that was ‘vaporized’ to make the plasma – it was chemically transformed in the process.
Cherry tomatoes are also popular!
Wow! This worked so well! I used a green grape and it looked awesome! I noticed that it “burned” in the bridge of skin. it was really cool! How does it work?
i love your science!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ak :] doder
can it work on eniething els ?
It sounds like the grape isn’t in the ‘sweet spot’ in the microwave – move it around a bit. Fizzing is not quite what we’re after. Check out the comments (there are a lot) to see what other kids have tried that worked…
I can’t get it to work! The grape just bubbles and fizzes. Does it need to cook longer? I’m setting the microwave for 20 sec. We have a newer type microwave.
super cool my boys loved it
This is cool but purple grapes don’t work. Green ones work great
Grape juice conducts electricity. Each grape half is a reservoir of grape juice connected by the thin tab of grape skin. The microwave produces energy that causes electrical current to move back and forth between the grape halves through the skin that connects the two halves. As current flows, the thin skin connector between the two halves dries out and burns up, and is unable to carry current any longer. The grape juice is still creating electricity and it wants to flow anyway. As more energy is absorbed, the heat increases (30000F). The current becomes so strong that it finds a way to flow to the other side of the grape by arcing across the gap. At this temperature and with all that arcing, the sparks fly. This is also where the electrons start zinging about. Ionized oxygen (0-1) is released as a product of plasma formation and immediately seeks out oxygen molecules (02) to bond with. This creates ozone (03). The bad smell in the microwave is ozone being generating. As you have been taught, it is true that electrons don’t exist on their own. As they zing about, they are looking for something to quickly bond to.
Loved this!!! 3/4 worked! My boys thought this was amazing! Thanks for making science come alive!
Interestingly enough, we watched the show One Way Out not 5 minutes later about plasma. Not intentionally, mind you. Such fun!