- Age:3+
- Time:10 min
- Difficulty:Easy
- Mess level:Medium, powdery
- Supervision:Yes
🧒 In one sentence
Baking soda mixed with a little hair conditioner makes soft, cool snow you can mould into snowballs, and when you add vinegar it fizzes and melts away.
No snow outside? Make some at the kitchen table. Two ingredients and five minutes give you a bowl of soft white snow that feels cool on your hands and packs into snowballs just like the real thing. Then comes the best part: build a snowman, drip vinegar on him and watch him fizz, bubble and melt into a puddle.
This is door 1 (and the fizzing snowman is door 7) in our STEM Advent Calendar, 24 days of Christmas science.
Materials
- 2 cups (about 450 g) baking soda
- About ⅓ cup (80 ml) white hair conditioner, the cheaper the better
- A large bowl or a tray with edges
- Optional: a pinch of fine silver glitter for sparkle
Everything for the snow: baking soda, white conditioner, a big bowl and a spoon. The glitter is optional.
For the fizzing snowman:
- White vinegar in a small cup
- A pipette, a squeeze bottle or a teaspoon
- Food colouring (optional)
- Googly eyes or buttons, small twigs and a scrap of orange paper or felt for the nose
- A kitchen thermometer (optional, for the experiment)
How to make fake snow
- Pour the baking soda into the bowl.
- Add the conditioner a spoonful at a time, and mix with your hands after each spoonful.
- Squeeze a handful. The snow is ready when it holds a snowball shape when you press it, but crumbles again when you rub it between your fingers.
- Too dry and powdery? Add a little more conditioner. Too sticky and wet? Add a spoonful of baking soda.
- Sprinkle in a pinch of glitter if you'd like sparkly snow.
That's it. Now feel it: run your fingers through the bowl and you'll notice the snow feels cool, a lot like real snow.
❄️ Make it really cold
Put the bowl of fake snow in the freezer for 30 minutes before play. Now it doesn't just feel cool, it really is cold, and little hands will squeal.
👨👧 Adult supervision needed
Fake snow is for hands, not mouths: baking soda and conditioner aren't food. Keep it away from eyes, and rinse with plenty of water if any gets in. Buttons, googly eyes and glitter are choking hazards for children under 3. Children with sensitive skin or eczema may find the conditioner irritating, so try a small amount first or let them play with a spoon. Wash hands after playing.
Things to try
- Snowballs. Pack a snowball and drop it from different heights. Does it hold together or break apart?
- Footprints. Press toy animals into a flat layer of snow and guess who walked past.
- Snow sculptures. Build an igloo, a snow castle or a tiny snow family.
- Hidden treasure. Bury small toys and dig them out with a spoon.
Why does fake snow feel cold?
Here's a question worth asking: is the fake snow actually colder than the room, or does it only feel colder?
Try it. Push a thermometer into the bowl of snow and leave another one on the table next to it. Wait two minutes and compare. You'll probably find the numbers are the same, or very close. The snow isn't colder than the room at all.
So why does it feel cold? Your skin is warm, about 33 °C, and the room is cooler, around 20 °C. When you touch something cooler than your skin, heat flows out of your fingers into it. Fake snow is damp and touches your skin in thousands of tiny places at once, so it pulls heat out of your fingers much faster than the air does. Your fingers notice heat leaving, and your brain reads that as "cold".
It's the same reason a metal spoon feels colder than a wooden spoon, even when both have been lying on the same table all day. You can test that in our heat conduction experiment.
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See what you’ll get →Fizzing, melting snowman
Now for the chemistry.
You need: fake snow, vinegar, food colouring, a pipette and bits for the face.
The result: a fizzing snowman, melting from the top down.
- Build a snowman on a tray: three snowballs stacked on top of each other, googly eyes, a twig for each arm and a little orange nose.
- Pour some vinegar into a small cup. For extra fun, add a drop of food colouring.
- Drip the vinegar onto the snowman with a pipette, a squeeze bottle or a teaspoon.
- Watch him fizz, bubble and slowly melt into a puddle.
Try melting him in different ways: drip slowly on his head, pour a whole spoonful on his tummy, or draw coloured lines down his body. Which way makes the biggest fizz?
What's happening?
Baking soda is a base and vinegar is an acid. When they meet, they react and make a gas called carbon dioxide. The gas forms millions of tiny bubbles, and that's the fizz. As the baking soda gets used up, the snowman loses the powder holding him together, and he collapses.
It's the same reaction that powers our homemade volcano and our baking soda rocket.
When the snowman fizzes, what happens to its temperature?
Make your prediction, then tap an answer to check!
🔬 Make it a real experiment
A whole snowman is a small reaction, so the temperature change can be hard to see. For a clear result, measure a bigger one: stand a kitchen thermometer in a glass with 100 ml of vinegar and write down the temperature. Stir in 2 tablespoons of baking soda, a little at a time so it doesn't overflow, and watch the number drop by a few degrees. Then try it with warm vinegar and with cold vinegar. Which one fizzes faster?
Cleaning up and storing
- Keep unused snow in a lidded container. It dries out over a few days; add a little conditioner and mix again.
- Snow that has fizzed with vinegar is used up and won't pack anymore. Scrape it into the bin, or rinse small amounts down the sink with plenty of water.
- Wipe the tray with a damp cloth. Dry baking soda sweeps up easily.
Questions to ask
- Does fake snow feel colder than the room? Is it really colder? How can we find out?
- Where do the bubbles come from when we add vinegar?
- Why does the snowman fall down as it fizzes?
- What other powders could we try instead of baking soda? (Try cornflour: does it fizz?)
Key takeaways
- Fake snow is 2 cups of baking soda and about ⅓ cup of white conditioner, mixed until it holds a snowball shape.
- It feels cold because it pulls heat from your fingers quickly, not because it's colder than the room.
- Vinegar (an acid) and baking soda (a base) react to make carbon dioxide bubbles, so the snowman fizzes and melts.
- The reaction is endothermic: it takes in heat, so the mixture gets a few degrees colder.
- It's for hands, not mouths. Keep it out of eyes and keep small decorations away from under-3s.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you make fake snow with two ingredients?
Mix 2 cups (about 450 g) of baking soda with about ⅓ cup (80 ml) of white hair conditioner. Add the conditioner a spoonful at a time and mix with your hands until the snow holds a snowball shape when you squeeze it.
Why does fake snow feel cold?
It pulls heat out of your warm fingers faster than the air does, so it feels cold even though a thermometer shows it's the same temperature as the room. Put it in the freezer for 30 minutes if you want it really cold.
Is fake snow safe for toddlers?
With supervision, yes for most children from about 3. It isn't food, so watch that it stays out of mouths and eyes. Leave out buttons, googly eyes and glitter for children under 3, and test a little on sensitive skin first.
Can I make fake snow without conditioner?
Yes. White shaving foam mixed into baking soda also works, and makes fluffier snow. Avoid adding plain water: it turns baking soda into a slushy paste that won't hold a shape.
Why does the snowman fizz when you add vinegar?
Vinegar is an acid and baking soda is a base. They react and make carbon dioxide gas, which forms the bubbles. The reaction also takes in heat, so the fizzing snow gets a little colder.
How long does fake snow last?
Stored in a lidded container, it keeps for about a week. If it dries out, mix in a little more conditioner. Once it has fizzed with vinegar, throw it away.
If you liked the fizzing snowman, keep the acids and bases coming: turn red cabbage juice into a set of colour-changing potions that show which kitchen liquids are acids, or leave an egg in vinegar for a few days to make a bouncy naked egg.
Happy exploring!
