Stoichiometry Exploding Bag Activities

Make sure you don't pop your bag!

Your students will enjoy this fun activity as they are challenged to balance chemical equations, perform mole calculations, determine limiting reagents, and understand stoichiometry. The activity uses chemistry to determine the exact amount of three ingredients to place in a zip lock bag, so that it fills up to its maximum size, but doesn't burst. Students will anxiously watch the fruits of their labor to see if the bag fills up or pops open. The Demonstration Kit is designed as a teacher-lead inquiry activity and contains enough materials to repeat the demonstration about 20 times, while the Laboratory Activity Kit is designed as a student-lead inquiry activity and contains enough materials to repeat the demonstration about 60 times.

These activities take students through exercises of determining the volume of a plastic bag, the molecular mass of the two solids being reacted, the number of moles of gas needed to be produced to fill the volume of the bag, stoichiometry to determine the number of moles of reactants needed, and then determining the number of grams of reactants. Once the students determine the number of grams, the teacher or students can measure it out and try the experiment to see if the bag becomes fully inflated and does not pop open.