Baking Soda Powered Boat experiment

This baking soda experiment boat is a fun hands on experiment. To make it go farther try doing it in the bathtub. You can also experiment with the amount of baking soda and vinegar you add to see if it goes faster or farther.

What’s going on?
If you mix baking soda and vinegar, you get a chemical reaction which creates carbon dioxide gas. When this happens inside your bottle boat, the gas only has one way to escape, and that’s out the straw. The gas flying down the straw and out the back pushes the boat forwards.

This is the same principle used by airplane engines. Hot gases are thrown backward out of the engine, and that propels the airplane forward.