Blast off with the ‘Space Gal’ Emily Calandrelli for Arm and Hammer’s Baking Soda Rocket Day

The volatile, back-and-forth relationship between baking soda and vinegar is one we all know well.

Every time the two get together, you can count on a serious — and seriously fun — reaction. But if you’re still mixing your chemical-reaction cocktails to make miniature volcanoes, today is the day to point those erupting bubbles in the other direction. Today, we’re using baking soda and vinegar to make rockets.

Thursday (Oct. 9) is Arm and Hammer’s second annual Baking Soda Rocket Day. Thousands of students across the U.S. are planning to break last year’s record of launching the most baking soda bottle rockets in a single day. To help them reach that goal, Arm and Hammer partnered with science communications expert Emily “The Space Gal” Calandrelli.

Thursday’s nationwide event — part of World Space Week, which runs from Oct. 4 to Oct. 10 — is expected to take place across 14,000 schools. “The goal is to help inspire this STEAM confidence in kids, so that they start thinking like a scientist,” Calandrelli told Space.com. (STEAM stands for “science, technology, engineering, art and math.”)

From aerospace engineer to television host to Blue Origin astronaut (and the 100th woman to reach space), Calandrelli has built her career around simplifying STEAM concepts through engaging, kid-friendly activities. The bottle rocket is one of her favorites.

“I think the fact that it is just so explosive and easy to make — those two in combination make for the perfect science experiment,” Calandrelli said.

🚀 Blast Off Year 2! | ARM & HAMMER™ Baking Soda Rocket Launch with Emily Calandrelli Shorts – YouTube

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The hands-on experiment/rocket building activity mixes baking soda and vinegar — a classroom-classic acid-base reaction that releases carbon dioxide gas — to propel a two-liter bottle (outfitted with your design of nose cone and fins) high into the air.

“Last year for Baking Soda Rocket Day, the coolest thing I saw were friends working together to launch their rocket,” Calandrelli said. “It was like they had pride in the rocket that they built, and they were just friends creating something together.”

In addition to being The Space Gal, Calandrelli is also The Space Mom. Her daughter is at the perfect age for experiments like this.

“I’m trying to instill a sense of community and science for her as she grows up,” Calandrelli said. “It’s events like this that create that community, because all of a sudden you have a friend who has a shared interest, which is science or space or creating things with your hands, or inventing things. And I think when you have this nationwide event like Baking Soda Rocket Day, that can be the launching point of your community in this field.”

Image credit: Arm and Hammer

Image credit: Arm and Hammer

Instructions

This year’s Rocket Day is expanding beyond the classroom. Among the thousands of participating schools, three flagship events are being held in New York, Texas and Florida. Calandrelli will lead from a school in Queens, where she will release a video to guide students through the construction and launch instructions.

In Texas, former NASA astronaut Mike Foreman will join local students with representatives from Space Center Houston to help walk them through the experiment while sharing what it’s like to fly atop an actual rocket. Students at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex will not only get to build a bottle rocket with the rest of the nation, they will also have the opportunity to participate in other STEAM-focused activities.

Rocket Day’s debut last year reached more than 180,000 students nationwide, according to a press release. To follow along today and build your own baking soda bottle rocket, download this handy, step-by-step instruction guide, and check out the Baking Soda Rocket Day website.