Introduction: Sodium Polyacrylate

By
About: I enjoy physically self-destructive acts in the name of science (like testing the taste of hydroflouric acid). I do stupid stuff constantly, like breaking open a flourescent bulb with a hammer to get some merc…

Here are some pictures of the amazing material sodium polyacrylate (SPA). In the pictures you will see what it does, and if you can't tell what happened, I added first 25, then 50 ml of water to about 3 ml of SPA. All the water was absorbed. The captions will give you a breif description of what you see in each slide. Enjoy.
Chemical Formula:
CH2-CH(CO2Na)

Pic 1: (from left to right) Powder scoop, bottle of SPA, Erlenmeyer flask
Pic 2: Adding SPA to the flask
Pic 3: SPA in the flask
Pic 4: Added 25 ml of water, absorbed and the SPA takes on the texture of fake snow
Pic 5: Some SPA in my hand, feels cool due to evaporation
Pic 6: Added another 25 ml of water to SPA, feels cold and slimy (think partially solidified Jello)