My 7 year old has stumped me.

Tonight, we did an experiment with baking soda and vinegar. You all know that drill, I assume. It’s a popular chemical reaction for little kids, just because it’s so dramatic. Well, my little scientist wanted to know what would happen if he added something in addition to the baking soda.

We set up our experiment quite well, if I do say so myself. 3 jars of (ok, approximately) the same height, 2 tsps of baking soda in each one. We kept one as a control, adding nothing, then added a tsp cinnamon to one jar, and a tsp sugar to the third jar. We then added 1/3 cup of vinegar to each jar to see what would happen. But before we did that, we made our hypotheses. I predicted that the jars with the cinnamon and the sugar wouldn’t react at all.

My hypothesis was incorrect.

The jar with the cinnamon DID react, only with a much slower reaction than the jar with just the baking soda. The jar with the sugar reacted so quickly, we actually set up another experiment so we could compare the pure baking soda and the baking soda mixed with sugar to see if the sugar actually accelerated that reaction. We decided, through our very scientific method of counting out loud, that the reaction times were actually equal.

But now my scientist wants to know why the cinnamon changed the reaction, and not the sugar?

Google gave me a very helpful lesson in what happens when baking soda is mixed with vinegar (and WOW is it more complicated than I thought–double replacement stuff and decomposition–all very intense and sciency), but sadly, nobody has ever thought to add cinnamon to the mix. All I got were some tasty recipes for pies.

So I’m doing what every mother does when she has a question she can’t answer. I’m turning to the blog.

Any scientists out there who can explain what’s going on here?

And let me just say that chemistry with my 7 year old is way more fun than it was in the 11th grade.