Students added chemicals into their pumpkinators (the beaker). A magnetic stirrer kept the solution moving while they waited for the results.
“There were quite a number of classes that thought the experiment was not working and looked away only to miss the pumpkinator suddenly changing to green then pumpkin orange,” said Head of Science Liz Turner.
“Why did this happen? There are many steps, a summary is: the intense blue colour is a copper (II) tartrate complex and the deep orange is copper (I) oxide. The green colour forms when there is a mixture of both compounds present.”
