[Rob_Bardos]

Hello chemistry forum!  I'm Rob and this is my first post but probably not my last.  I enjoy science and chemistry of all sorts and I have an interesting question that hopefully will help me and spark an interesting thread at the same time.   

So here's the scenario.   You can make a polymer goo from mixing white school glue, water, food coloring and borax powdered cleaning agent.     

My first run at the experiment yielded a very nice polymeric reaction but I found that it wasn't quite as gooey as I'd like the final product to be. I found the first try to be rubbery and stretchable but I guess the question I have for the forum is what could I do to make the final product less rubbery stiff and more runny.

Here's how I ran the experiment precisely the first try. 


1. Mixed 8 ounces of Elmer's brand white school glue with one rinse out bottle quantity of warm water.    Mixed the solution till it appeared even in thickness.

2. Added 8 drops of standard food coloring to the glue mixture to give it color, and blended in the colorant.   

3. Mixed 1/2 cup of warm water with one teaspoon of powdered borax powder.  Mixed as well as possible though complete dissolution of this mixture didn't seem possible.   

4.  Poured the borax-water solution into the mixing bowl of colored and diluted glue. 


Observations: 

The reaction set up very quickly under brisk mixing action.   Mixing continued until the material began to take up material off the walls of the mixing bowl.  Then I proceeded to clean up the walls of the plastic mixing dish by rolling the now clumped blob of material to absorb the remaining material in the bowl.

The outcome was very good.   It is stretchy, fun to handle and play with. 
But I would be happier if the end product was slightly less stiff and rubbery. 

Does anyone have any suggestions to this experiment that might make the polymer chains shorter or somehow make the end product a bit softer and less
Stiff.     Any comments or feedback is welcomed.  Thank you!   

PS; its a fun experiment and I do reccomend trying it out.   

Here's a website with a recepie for reference.
http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/lab/experiments/glue-borax-gak

[Borek]

The most obvious way of trying to change properties of your product is to change the glue/borax ratio. Doesn't mean it will yield the desired effect, but chemistry is an experimental science

That's without even checking what is happening in the mixture, knowing composition of the glue and the reaction could give some more hints.

[Rob_Bardos]

I arrived at a similar conclusion and the clue was revealed to me on the linked web page, where the author states that the borax is responsible for bonding the polymer chains in the school glue.   Therefore my my reasoning it would follow by using less borax, there would be less available for bonding the polymer chains.  I'll try out the experiment again sometime this week using 1/2 the reccomended borax and will report the observations I make on using this hypothesis.