Foaming pumkin soup

For this experiment, we use a variant of the well-known 'elephant toothpaste' experiment. Of course, this is not a real toothpaste, but an experiment where you can make a lot of foam very quickly. What do you need for this? A reaction between two products and a catalyst to make the reaction happen super fast.

Do you know what a catalyst is? It is a bit like a wizard in the chemical world. It helps make things. It makes things much faster.

A good example is when we want to burn our body sugars (carbohydrates) to get energy. We need catalysts, which we call enzymes, to make this happen.

In this experiment, we use hydrogen peroxide and soap. The hydrogen peroxide will gradually turn into water and oxygen gas. We can 'capture' that oxygen gas in soapsuds to make bubbles. But on its own, it's a bit slow. Until we add a catalyst, for this experiment potassium iodide. Suddenly, the hydrogen peroxide turns into water and oxygen gas super fast, making a lot of foam incredibly fast.