University of Guelph physics club attempts new world record for elephant toothpaste
'I hope they see that science can be cool,' club member Melanie Hudakoc says of inspiring youth
Take 52 litres of hydrogen peroxide, 10 litres of potassium iodide and a few bottles of dish soap and you create — unofficially — the world's largest elephant toothpaste.
Elephant toothpaste is a popular science experiment where you mix the above ingredients together to trigger a reaction that causes an eruption foam that looks like toothpaste coming out of a tube very quickly.
The University of Guelph's Physics and Astronomy Club made the Guinness World Record attempt Thursday morning on campus.
Watch as the final ingredients are added:
Jason "Orbax" Thomas, the communication officer for the physics department, said it appeared as though they had beaten the previous record, which was set on the show Live with Kelly and Ryan with the help of Science Bob. In that attempt, 40 litres of peroxide were poured into two buckets of sodium iodide.
The total amount then measured 13.07 cubic metres.
"It actually met our expectations, which is about the proper amount," Thomas said.
He estimated they have 15 to 17 cubic metres.
The event was planned to coincide with Guelph Science Olympics, which brings high school students to the campus for science activities.
Fourth year science students and physics club members Melanie Hudakoc and Joelle Easter said they hoped the experiment would inspire young scientists.
"I hope they see that science can be cool. We've got a lot of women here, so I hope that they can also be inspired by that and see that women can be in physics," Hudakoc said.
She added the elephant toothpaste experiment is "universally cool" which is why they hoped it would get a lot of attention.
Easter said it's such a visual experiment, that everyone loves it.
"I feel like no matter what your scientific background is, you can understand visually what's going on," she said.
Check out more photos from the attempt:
