How can you make volcanoes without baking soda and vinegar?

Answer 1

The reason in science demonstrations at schools, vinegar and baking soda are used is that when these two ingredients are mixed, carbon dioxide gas is produced very rapidly. This makes the vinegar and anything else mixed in with it froth up and expand. This causes the "eruption" of the volcano.

An alternative approach may be to use diet cola and the mint candy known as "Mentos" as demonstrated on the US Discovery channel program "Mythbusters".

The mentos are covered in lots of small dimples. When a mento is dropped into diet cola, these dimples act as points of nucleation for the dissolved carbon dioxide in the cola meaning that bubbles form at these points. This causes lots of gas to be released very rapidly (just as if you'd shaken up the bottle of cola and taken the lid off).

Apparently the mint flavoured mentos are required for this to work (as they are covered in the tiny dimples whereas other flavours have different coatings which do not have the dimples).

This may be a suitable method of creating your volcanic eruption demonstration.

For more information about the ingredients and how the above process works, please see the related link.

Answer 2

One way to create a volcano without using baking soda and vinegar is by mixing hydrogen peroxide and dry yeast. When these two substances react, they produce oxygen gas, which creates a bubbly eruption similar to a volcanic eruption. This experiment can be done safely outdoors to prevent any mess.