Mario Party - with a little science

One of my son's favorite Mario Party 8 games is Shake It Up. In this game each character shakes up a can of soda. The winner is the one whose soda shoots up the highest when they open the can. Here is a video of the game -



Now while it's all very fun on a video game the logistics and potential danger of letting a group of children shake up soda cans is another story. This game made my son's list of top 5 Mario Party games though so I was determined to figure it out.

After thinking about it for awhile I suddenly remembered the Mad Science Halloween party we did last year. One of our experiments was The Sandwich Bomb. In it you use the classic combination of vinegar and baking soda to make a ziploc bag poof up. It can be seen here -

Steve Spangler Science Sandwich Bomb

How did this turn into a Mario Party party game? First I drew and cut out pictures of soda cans to glue onto the front of our sandwich size ziploc bags. Here is where it turns into a game, only some of the bags will have baking soda, the rest contain flour. (Note - Powdered sugar is closer in color but flour works fine, especially since the bags will be out of view until the start of the game.)

The children will stand in a line and grab a ziploc out of a box or basket. On the count of three they will pop open the vinegar and shake their bags. Whichever team has the most bags that poof up will be the winner. Be sure to have one more baking soda bag then you do teams so you won't have to worry about doing a tie-breaker.

Here are two of the finished bags, one with baking soda and one with flour (vinegar will be added later, I don't want any accidents before the party). For a detailed how to and total cost of this game, scroll down.

First I held a bag over a piece of paper to see how big my cans could be (which tured out to be four per piece of printer paper) and folded the paper to the right size.


Then I drew the can. You can also print out this clip art that I used for inspiration - Pop Can Clipart

I folded three more pieces of paper and stacked them together.

This way I was able to cut out 12 at once.

Then I colored them in

Then I glued the cans on the bags and put in the baking soda and flour. Vinegar filled snack size bags will be added later.

What was used and final cost -

Paper (already had) - $0
Markers and crayons (already had) - $0
Baking soda (already had) - $0
Flour (already had) - $0
Sandwich size ziploc bags (already had) - $0
Vinegar (already have) - $0
Snack size ziploc bags (leftover from halloween) - $0

)Note - If you don't have snack size bags but do have sandwich bags, you can use sandwich size for the vinegar as well. Just blow air into the bag before sealing to make it easier to pop open.)

Total cost - $0