The Effects of Borax in Slime

Abstract

One of the most common recipes used to create slime only requires three ingredients: Water, liquid glue, and borax. In order for slime to become squishy and malleable enough to play with, polymers that exist in glue are linked together by borate ions, which are created when water and borax is mixed together. This process gives glue a bit more shape and structure to go from a liquid that spreads out to a slime substance that is more rigid yet flexible. Therefore, it is assumed that by changing the amount of borax used, we can change the consistency/stretchiness of the glue polymers. To determine exactly how the amount of borax can affect the stretchiness of slime, six different slime solutions were created with different amounts of borax added: 0 tsp, ¼ tsp, ½ tsp, ¾ tsp, 1tsp, and 1 ¼ tsp. Each slime was then stretched and measured to the point where the width at the skinniest part was 1cm or at the point of breaking. This experiment was replicated three times for each concentration. It was predicted that having more borax present in the slime should increase the stretchiness, meaning the solution with 0 tsp should not stretch and the solution with 1 ¼ tsp should stretch the most. However, our results found that there was no statistically significant difference in how much each recipe’s slime stretched and cannot conclude the amount of borax had an effect on a slime’s stretchiness.