This weekend I conducted an experiment with sodium silicate that I bought online. The product was a rubber like ball that was both bouncy, but brittle after a certain point. The compound was created by reacting 40 ml of sodium silicate with 10 ml of isopropyl alcohol and mixing them created the substance almost immediately. The reaction online involved ethyl alcohol, so I want to further research the reactive properties of different alcoholsizes and test what differences between the products.
Sodium silicate is NOT actually used to create rubber balls due to the fact it can break, however, it is commonly used as an industrial cement to create cardboard. Sodium silicate is also frequently used as a drilling fluid to avoid the collapse of boar walls and is used by builders to decrease the porosity of cement through a reaction that permanently bonds it to the surface. The best use I saw online is as a coagulation agent in waste water treatment. I will further explore sodium silicate over the next few weeks.
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