What Slime Taught Me
An article by Grace Wang, one of three winners of Oxbridge Inspire’s STEM writing competition 2018.
Slime is all over the internet. Many YouTubers are making videos about slime: how you can create it, how you can change the colour, how you can make it more aesthetically pleasing and play with it. They also make ASMR videos about slime as many people find the sound of squishing, poking and playing with slime relaxing and stress relieving. These videos about this simple substance can get millions of views from all over the world.
Why do I like slime? There are many reasons as to why I like slime, the main reason is because it has a very soothing sound and it is fun to play with. Playing with slime not only gives me satisfaction, but it allows me to take out all of my anger on it. I experimented with many combinations of how to make slime and only some were successful. I was curious as to why this was and decided to look deeper into the science behind slime.
Here are some of the recipes that worked well:
- PVA glue (50ml) + large bottle of Airwick freshener (spray for a total of 48s)
- 2) PVA glue + laundry detergent
- 3) PVA glue (50ml) + eye drops (28 drops) w/ bicarbonate of soda (5 pinches)
- 4) PVA glue + Burt’s Bees lotion w/ bicarbonate of soda
- 5) Clear glue (38ml) + eye drops (25 drops) w/ bicarbonate of soda (4 pinches)
- 6) Clear glue + big bottle of Airwick
- 7) Clear glue + laundry detergent.
By looking at these recipes, we can see that it is important to have PVA (polyvinyl alcohol) or clear glue. But we have to add something else to turn them into slime. That important ingredient is borax, which is present in all of the second materials in my list above, such as: large bottles of Airwick, laundry detergent, contact lens solution eye drops, and Burt’s Bees lotion. I started my research by looking into what happens when borax is added to PVA and what I found was that glue is made up of short polymer chains, that are not connected to each other, which is why glue feels like a liquid but is a lot stickier than water. Glue is stickier than water because the polymer molecules are formed by many atoms, whilst water only consists of 3 atoms: 2 hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom. Once borax is added, it connects the short polymer chains into networks that are much stronger, thus leading to the production of slime.
Despite slime being fun, there can also be hazards. Playing with slime can really dry out your hands depending on the ingredients you used to make it and how much you play with the slime, which I learnt through personal experience. Other hazards include: headache, sore throat, nausea and skin irritation. Even though something is fun, it doesn’t mean it is safe for our health or for the environment. Only when you know the science behind it, can you really understand what is happening. Science is everywhere in our daily life, so let’s explore it!
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