Chem 11: How to Make Slime

Slime has a wide range of behaviors. It can of course be slimey and runny like mucus or it can bounce like a ball.

Slime has two parts: PVA and Salt

Polyvinyl Alcohol: make sure to wear goggles.

What is in slime? Slime is made of two components. One is a polymer that dissolves in water. The other is a salt that crosslinks the polymer chains together. The two strands of polymers here are made of a chain of carbon atoms. This slime has every other carbon with an oxygen atom which is connected to a hydrogen. The polymer name is polyvinyl alcohol. The OH's are why it's called "alcohol." Vinyl is the building block. It consists of 2 carbons and 3 hydrogens and readily connects to itself to form chains. Here the right carbon connects to OH. In other polymers the OH is replaced by something else.

Step 1: Mass out 4.8 grams of Poly vinyl alcohol : Poly vinyl alcohol aka PVA. Stir the 4.8 g of the PVA into 120 mL of distilled water.

Step 2: Mass out 6.4 grams of Borax powder and dissolve the borax into 160 mL of warm water. Borax is sodium borate. Stir well to dissolve the borax powder.

Step 3: The polyvinyl alcohol powder you have will need to be dissolved in water and that will take some heating and a lot of stirring.

Step 3a: Keep stirring and heating until most of the PVA is dissolved. It will take several minutes. (Maybe more). You won't get every bit of it too dissolve, but try to get as much as you can to dissolve.

NOTE: Slime is made up of all of the PVA solution and only 25 mL of the Borax solution.

Step 4: If you want, you can add one drop of food coloring to the polyvinyl alcohol solution.

Step 5: Measure out 25mL of the borax solution in the graduated cylinder and pour it into the PVA solution and stir vigorously. This is where a helper is handy. Someone can do the pouring as the other stirs vigorously and holds onto the beaker. The liquid will start getting thicker in a couple of seconds. Stir until it won't let you stir.

Slime will flow over a variety of objects.

Clean up by washing all of your beakers.