First off, the necessary safety warnings. This shit is NOT even remotely edible, and in all honesty, I would wear latex gloves. But it’s fun. A whooooooole lotta fun. Just….wash your hands after. You’ll see why.

Very basic experiment, anyways…you shouldn’t fuck up.

Materials Needed:
◊ Polyvinyl alcohol solution (preferably 4%ish…can usually be found as a sponge-mop head refill, rubbermaid, like $9 maybe?…..do NOT confuse with polyvinyl acetate. Just….don’t. If you decide to try, have poison control on the line when you do so, k?)
◊ Food coloring!
◊ 4% sodium borate solution (this is borax…..thats it, borax; dissolve 4 grams of it in about 100 mL of water, or, to make it easier, do about 38 grams in 950 mL, or roughly a 10th of a pound of borax in 8 cups of water. Stir til clear.
◊ A glass or plastic container you wont mind throwing away when you’re done with it.
◊ Some sort of heavy-duty stirring object, preferably metal or wood, also willing to be thrown away or vigorously cleaned.

Process:
1.) Don gloves.
2.) Place a little over 4 fluid ounces of the PVA in the plastic/glass container. (If more is desired, use a cup of PVA instead).
3.) Stir, damn you, stir like your life depended on it! (and add a few drops of food coloring while you’re at it!)
4.) Add (if 4 fluid ounces of PVA used, add 1/3 of a fluid ounce of borax soln (solution in chemistry-speak); if a full cup is used, add about a 10th of a cup.*** (Yes, these are tiny measurements, but in the world of chemistry, small can make a biiiiiiiiiiiig difference). *Insert joke about “It’s not how deep you fish but how you wriggle the worm” here*
5.) Stir. Stir some more. Sing a sea chanty while you stir. I don’t really care so long as it gets done. As a result, you should get a quickly-thickening, slimy soln. The more you stir the more dense and slimy and thicker it will get — lets it sit and it will harden. If you wanna play with it, take it out and put it in a baggy and use it in that, unless you happen to have covered your counters with newspaper, in which case, bounce that shit around!
6.) ….wash your hands. You have a chemical slime on it :p Common sense, please.

(And why yes, this IS the same slime from ghostbusters and nickleodeon’s famous green slime.)

*** Do not attempt to create a “recipe” because these are conversions of metric measurements….a ratio of 2/25 (mL) of borate/PVA is used.
The science behind it!
Geek Warning:
Science follows this warning. Keep all disinterested, ADD or liberal-arts majorsrs out.

The polyvinyl-sodium borate solution acts as what’s called cross-linked condensation polymer in chemistry and a non-newtonian fluid in physics (and THOSE are fun….believe you me). Basically, the result of this means that the polymer will have tensile, elastic and much more fun properties. When mixed, the borate ion that was separated in the solution (into sodium (Na+) and borate (B4O5 2-)) will cross-link with the multiple hydroxyl groups on the PVA’s molecular spine, which makes a 3D structure. And since both are aqueous solutions, the the remaining holes in the network are filled with water, resulting in a gel! Thus, you have a slimy gel made of roughly 90% water! (The chemical formula of one of these units is 2(CHOHCH2CHOHOHCH2CHOHOH)B ….or in other words, a double 5-carbon spine (CHOHCH2CHOHOHCH2CHOHOH) back to back with multiple hydroxyl groups bonding to a single boron. Since this is quite weak (this complex coordination compound has, as the name implies, double the bonds of it’s charge), the boron-hydroxyl bonds are interchangeable and means that it is very easily malleable and play-with-able and god-knows-what-other-fun-reasons-you-can-come-up-with. This is called dynamic equilibrium (and is not the same dynamic equilibrium as in microtubule GTP/GDP/actin complex in cellular mitosis, so cell biologists get it out of your heads :p). Basically, since the borate ions and hydroxyl groups stay in close proximity, you can reshape this as much as you want before it dries out! Have fun sliming!