Carbon Dioxide -- Greenhouse Gas

When you go to the Supermarket to get some "dry ice" for your camping or fishing trip (to keep the food in your cooler staying cool for the duration of the trip), you are getting chunks of solid carbon dioxide.

When I was a science teacher, I drove to the hardware store in the morning to get a chunk of "dry ice" for an experiment I planned to demonstrate to the kids that day. I wasn't thinking and, instead of using an "ice chest" or "cooler" to transport the stuff, I used a large Tupperware sealable ("with the burp") salad bowl with lid. After sealing the "dry ice" in the container, I put the container on the back seat of my car and started to drive down the road about 3 miles to my school and my classroom.

I had only gotten about a mile down the road and what sounded like an explosion from the back of my car nearly made me careen off the road. I thought I had blown a tire--so I pulled over to the shoulder. Got out of the car and took a walk around the car to check for damage. All the tires were fine. But when I looked into the back of my car, the "smoke" or "fog" was filling the back of my car. The expanding gas from the dry-ice had blown the top off the tupperware. Definitely a good dramatic display for my students.

When I got to the science teacher's office, I resealed the Tupperware container tightly and checked the time it took for the lid to blow off. Then I took the container to my classroom for the day's demonstrations.

It was a blast to watch the kids' eyes grow wide as they watched the ballooning lid of the container while I explained how carbon dioxide is a substance that "Sublimates--by going from solid to gaseous state without going through the liquid state. At about the time I finished the explanation, the lid would blow off the Tupperware container with a huge boom (my classroom had an uninsulated corrugated tin roof--which sort of amplified the blast). It was fun watching the kids jump out of their chairs in surprise. The lesson had some of the most impact of all of my chemistry lessons when I was teaching--the kids remembered the lesson!