Have you ever touched seaweed with your foot while strolling on the beach? Did you notice how it often feels slimy? This is because seaweed is covered in a jelly-like layer that prevents it from being damaged by the waves.
As well as being essential to the survival of many marine creatures, as food and as a habitat, seaweed (and phytoplankton) is also responsible for producing about half of the total oxygen on Earth!
We use it as food, as an anti-inflammatory, as a fertilizer and as a soil conditioner. Scientists have also discovered that seaweed can even be used to thicken just about any liquid, and so, seaweed is used as a binding agent in products such as toothpaste and shampoo.
With this experiment you’ll witness this last property of seaweed; you will observe how seaweed acts as a binding/thickening agent in food, by mixing alginate with water.