Step-by-step tutorial
Step 1
Gather your materials. You’ll need ½ cup glue, ½ cup shaving cream, ⅛ cup water, 1 ½ tbsp contact solution, ¼ tsp baking soda, ½ cup foam beads, and liquid colors.
Step 2
Pour 1 cup glue, ⅛ cup water, and ¼ tsp baking soda into the bowl. Mix!
Step 3
Add 1 ½ tbsp contact solution & mix!
Step 4
Use your hands to knead the slime until it is firm. Add more contact solution if it is too sticky.
Tip
More contact solution = less sticky and firmer slime!
Step 5
Add ½ cup shaving cream and knead until fully incorporated.
Step 6
Add ½ cup foam beads! We used a mixture of white & multi-colored beads. Knead until fully incorporated.
Step 7
Play with your crunchy slime!
Learn more
Floam is made of slime and slime is non-Newtonian fluid! This means that it defies the laws of classical physics. How cool is that?! Slime starts with a polymer base, which in our case is glue. A “polymer” is a chemistry term for a substance that’s made of many little chains of molecules– “poly” means “many”, and “mer” means part in Greek. These chains easily slide past each other, which allows polymers to stretch and deform really easily. But when we add our activator, contact solution, it causes a chemical reaction that links some of these polymer chains together. These extra linkages between the chemical chains in the glue make the mixture stiffer. However, these cross-linkages break and deform easily, which is why slime feels more solid than glue, but is still super stretchy.
Common activators for slime recipes are contact solution, powdered laundry detergent, and Borax. All of these contain boric acid which causes the chemical reaction!
Fun fact: The hagfish is an eel-like fish that can release a chemical that turns the water around it into sticky slime. They do this to protect themselves from predators!