Ready, set … fire? Chemistry students watch in amazement as two retired teachers set a handful of bubbles ablaze.

On Oct. 21 and 22, chemistry classrooms were visited by former teachers who performed a series of experiments to spark student interest in Mole Day and the National Mole Day Association. Mole day is a holiday celebrated by chemists around the world that was inspired by a chemistry algorithm.

“A mole is a sort of unit that is used mostly in chemistry,” Allen Xie (10) said. “The reason why Mole Day is on October 23 is because the number for Mole Day … is to the power of 23, so 10, 23, October 23.”

Students were given the opportunity to participate in experiments and have hands-on engagement.

“One of the experiments that really stuck out to me was this experiment where you take some soap and you pump methane gas into it, and it makes these bubbles that were full of methane,” Xie said. “So you would grab a handful of those bubbles and hold it out, and then the guy would take a lighter and light up the bubbles, there would be fire and it went very high.”

Witnessing these experiments gave students an exciting point-of-view of science.

“It explained how things worked, and it made science more fun,” Daniela Lagos (10) said.