How To Make Dancing Raisins

You will need the following items for this activity: Drinking Glass, Clear Soda, and some Raisins

This simple experiment teaches us about buoyancy. Buoyancy is the ability to rise or float in liquid. To start, take your clear soda and fill up the drinking glass. Next, drop some raisins into the soda. At first they will fall to the bottom of the glass due to the raisins being heavier than the soda. Keep watching them and see what happens when tiny bubbles start to collect on the raisins.

Why do they shoot up to the top? Why do they fall back down?

Why It Works

Raisins are heavier than the soda, right? So they sink down to the bottom of the glass. The carbonation in the soda is creating bubbles, which then collects onto all the rough surfaces of the raisins. With all these little pockets of air bubbles now clinging to the raisins giving buoyancy, they start to lift off the bottom. When they reach the top of the soda, the bubbles pop and are no longer helping with buoyancy, causing the raisins to fall back down to the bottom where they will collect more bubbles.

Note: we tried both Lemon Lime Soda and Seltzer Water. The seltzer water had more carbonation resulting in a longer and more active dance off between the raisins. Tonic water will give you the same results as the seltzer water.

Enjoy, keep it simple, make it fun