Carbon snake

Okay kiddo, have you ever seen charcoal burn? It looks like a black stick, right? When we light it, it turns into ash and makes some red sparks. Well, when we put it in a certain way, it can look like a snake! A carbon snake, to be exact.

Here's how it works: First, we need to take a piece of charcoal and crush it up into a fine powder. Then we mix it with a special type of sugar called "sucrose." It's the same kind of sugar that we put in our cereal in the morning. But we don't eat this mixture, okay? We just use it to make the carbon snake.

Once we have our mixture, we put it in a little container, like a metal dish, and light it. When it heats up, the sugar starts to break down and release gases. These gases make the charcoal powder expand and create a lot of heat.

Then, something really cool happens. The expanding charcoal powder pushes the melted sugar out of the container in a long string, just like a snake's body. The sugar gets really hot and turns into a black, carbon foam that looks like a snake.

But don't touch it, kiddo! It's still really hot and can burn you. So we just watch it from a safe distance and enjoy the amazing carbon snake dance.