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Have you ever eaten a packet of crisps and wondered what
to do with the wrapper?
Try this!
What you need:
- Oven
- Plastic (not foil) crisp packet - try a supermarket own brand,
Chipsticks or Space Raiders
- Water
- Washing up liquid
- Paper towel / dish cloth
- Baking tray
- Foil
- Oven glove
How to:
Ask an adult for help using an oven.
- Preheat the oven to 250 degrees Celsius.
- Eat your crisps.
- Clean your crisp packet using water and washing up liquid.
- Dry the crisp packet.
- Cover the bottom of the baking tray with foil.
- Put the crisp packet on the foil and put the baking tray in the
oven.
- Leave the crisp packet for two to three minutes.
- Ask an adult to take the baking tray out of the oven - make
sure they use an oven glove!
What has happened to the crisp packet?
Shrunken crisp packet
You could make your tiny crisp packet into a keyring! Punch a
hole in the corner of the crisp packet and add it to a key
chain.
What's happening?
This experiment will only work with plastic crisp packets, not
foil ones. Plastic crisp packets are made from long chains of
molecules called 'polymers'. In crisp packets, these polymer chains
are stretched out straight.
When you heat up the crisp packet, the polymer chains start to
get more energy. This makes the polymer chains vibrate and start
curling up. The wrapper seems to shrink because all the polymer
chains have curled up over each other!