Make Sodium Silicate

Make Sodium Silicate

We make sodium silicate from drain cleaner and those little gel beads you find packaged with electronic items for humidity control.

The procedure is really simple, just make a solution of 10mL with 4-8grams of sodium hydroxide, use the full 8 grams if you want stoichiometric sodium silicate, and 4 grams if you want "liquid glass" solution for doing the chemical garden experiments.

Heat the solution and add in 6 grams worth of crushed silica gel beads. The finer the better. if they aren't dissolving, you might need to add more water.

Once it's dissolved, you'll have a concentrated solution of sodium silicate.

For experiments using Sodium Silicate solution, check out these videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sYcK-b5NvI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a45jZOc7PRY

For information on the chemistry, check out the web page at: http://sites.google.com/site/nurdrage/chemistry-experiments/make-sodium-silicate