What You Need

• 4-ounce bottle of Elmer’s Glue-All
• Two large glass bowls
• Water
• Green food coloring
• Large spoon
• Measuring cup
• 1 teaspoon 20 Mule Team Borax
• Ziploc storage bag or airtight container

What to Do
Empty the bottle of Elmer’s Glue-All into the first bowl. Fill the empty glue bottle with water and then pour it into the bowl of glue. Add ten drops of food coloring and stir well.

In the second bowl, mix the borax with 1 cup water. Stir until the powder dissolves.

Slowly pour the colored glue into the bowl containing the borax solution, stirring as you do so. Remove the thick glob that forms, and knead the glob with your hands until it feels smooth and dry. Discard the excess water remaining in the bowl. Store the Green Slime in the Ziploc bag or airtight container.

The more Borax you add, the firmer your slime will be.

What Happens
The resulting soft, pliable, rubbery glob snaps if pulled quickly, stretches if pulled slowly, and slowly oozes to the floor if placed over the edge of a table.

Why It Works
The polyvinylacetate molecules in the glue act like invisible bicycle chains drifting around the water. The borax molecules (sodium tetraborate) act like little padlocks, locking the chain links together wherever they touch the chain. The locks and chains form an interconnected “fishnet,” and the water molecules act like fish trapped in the net.

Bizarre Facts

• Green Slime is a non-Newtonian fluid -a liquid that does not abide by any of Sir Isaac Newton’s laws on how liquids behave. Quicksand, gelatin, and ketchup are all non-Newtonian fluids.
• Increasing the amount of borax in the second bowl makes the slime thicker. Decreasing the amount of borax makes the slime more slimy and oozy.
• A non-Newtonian fluid’s ability to flow can be changed by applying a force. Pushing or pulling on the slime makes it temporarily thicker and less oozy.
• 20 Mule Team Borax is named for the twenty-mule teams used during the late nineteenth century to transport borax 165 miles across the desert from Death Valley to the nearest train depot in Mojave, California. The twenty-day round trip started 190 feet below sea level and climbed to an elevation of over 4,000 feet before it was over.
• Between 1883 and 1889, the twenty-mule teams hauled more than twenty million pounds of borax out of Death Valley. During this time, not a single animal was lost nor did a single wagon break down.
• Today it would take more than 250 mule teams to transport the borax ore processed in just one day at Borax’s modern facility in the Mojave desert.
• Although the mule teams were replaced by railroad cars in 1889, twenty-mule teams continued to make promotional and ceremonial appearances at events ranging from the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair to President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration in 1917. They won first place in the 1917 Pasadena Rose Parade and attended the dedication of the San Francisco Bay Bridge in 1937.
• Borax deposits in Death Valley were abandoned when richer deposits were found elsewhere in the Mojave desert, turning mining settlements into ghost towns that now help make the region a tourist attraction.
• According to legend, borax was used by Egyptians in mummification.
• In the furniture business, the word borax signifies cheap, mass-produced furniture.
• 20 Mule Team Borax was once proclaimed to be a “miracle mineral” and was used to aid digestion, keep milk sweet, improve the complexion, remove dandruff, and even cure epilepsy.

The Elmer Story
In 1936, Borden launched a series of advertisements featuring cartoon cows, including Elsie, the spokescow for Borden dairy products. In 1940, compelled by Elsie’s popularity, Borden dressed up “You’ll Do Lobelia,” a seven-year-old, 950-pound Jersey cow from Brookfield, Massachusetts, as Elsie for an exhibit at the World’s Fair.

She stood in a barn boudoir decorated with whimsical props including churns used as tables, lamps made from milk bottles, a wheelbarrow for a chaise lounge, and oil paintings of Elsie’s ancestors – among them Great Aunt Bess in her bridal gown and Uncle Bosworth, the noted Spanish-American War admiral.

This attracted the attention of RKO Pictures, which hired Elsie to star with Jack Oakie and Kay Francis in the movie Little Men. Borden needed to find a replacement for Elsie for the World’s Fair exhibit.

Elsie’s husband, Elmer, was chosen, and the boudoir was converted overnight into a bachelor apartment, complete with every conceivable prop to suggest a series of nightly poker parties.

In 1951, Borden chose Elmer to be the marketing symbol for all of Borden’s glue and adhesive products. Elsie the Cow and her husband Elmer have two calves, Beulah and Beauregard.

Who Ya Gonna Call?

The 1984 movie Ghostbusters, starring Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, and Harold Ramis, and featuring ghosts that spewed slime, inspired the catchphrase “I’ve been slimed.”