Smithsonian Smithsonian Micro Volcano

What's not great about combining baking soda and vinegar in a narrow tube for a kid? My 6 year old had fun with this.

That said, the design and assembly looked good on paper but have some glaring but easily corrected problems.

Pros:

Fun

Stokes the imagination

Cons:

Unnecessarily difficult to assemble (but easy to solve that, see below)

Directions missing a key step

If you buy this toy, do these things to make life much easier:

1. If you use the tube supplied, make sure to attach the bottom on it before you do any other assembly. This was omitted from the directions.

2. If you use the tube supplied, instead of trying to thread the loooong string through the holes in the cardboard base, snip each hole on the cardboard base with some scissors so the hole becomes a slot.

3. Cut the string in half.

4. Instead of the tube supplied, which has a detached (read leaky) bottom, use some other plastic cup that is fully enclosed on the bottom and sides. That way when you pour the vinegar in it, it doesn't run out the bottom.

We used a larger version of this product with my son and it was a great toy to teach him about the science behind the "eruption". I bought this particular product (Micro Volcano) as a gift and would say that it is too small for little hands to manipulate. Moreover, the owe factor is not just there with the micro version.

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There was missing information in the instructions that left the plaster/sand mixture a mess because we tried to guess at how to do it.

Not sure how this would have worked if we would have known how to combine the ingredients properly, but I did like the pump and the fact that it "erupted," rather than the old pour vinegar into the top way.

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My 8 year old son just finished building this volcano and is now waiting for the plaster to dry.He really enjoyed building it, although threading the string through all those tiny holes was a bit frustrating as the string is very long.It kept getting tangled, so I took over that part and cut it into more manageable lengths.There are a few extra knots under the volcano now, but the result is the same.My son enjoyed wetting the plaster strips, and layering them to build up his volcano.And in a few hours (hopefully?) it will be dry enough to paint.We've done the baking soda/vinegar experiment a few times now, so this project was more about building the volcano for him.I only paid about half the price it is listed on Amazon, so I'm pretty satisfied with the 40 minutes of hands-on entertainment it has provided my son.Please note:This is their small volcano (only about 3-1/2 inches tall when finished).It was a fun project though, so I think I'll order the large volcano also.

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