Sunday, November 16, 2008

Science Sunday: Exploding Colors

Good evening and welcome to Science Sunday!
Prepare to amaze your children, scouts, spouses, parents, etc...because I am going to teach you how to make color EXPLODE!

The Process: Take your average pie plate and pour just enough whole milk in it to cover the bottom. Then, drop a few drops of liquid food coloring around the edge. Note: Gel food coloring won't work well for this project.
The kids like putting the drops in, so you can give them each a color to be in charge of if you want.
Observe:
Be sure you don't agitate the colors or the milk. You want the plate to be as still as possible.
THEN...take some standard liquid dish soap (I used Ivory, but any brand will do), and squirt some into the middle of the pie plate.
What happens?
The COLORS EXPLODE!

How it works: The dish soap pushes the fat in the milk away from itself. Since the milk has food coloring in it, the chemical reaction between the soap and the milk makes the colors swirl and mix. The higher the fat content in your milk, the more reaction you'll get!
If you have younger kids, you can just show them and let them enjoy it, but if you want, you can really turn this little trick into a mini chemistry lesson.
Have fun with it, I sure did! And I don't even HAVE kids!

5 comments:

Mellanee said...

WOW! That's awesme. Pow WOW!

L Chang said...

Wow! It looks like the hot pots in Yellowstone!
Is hot pots one word or two...I have got to go back to school!

Tanya said...

can't wait to do it! trey and lucy will love it.

Unknown said...

In the 60's they called that psycodellic. They tell me that LSD, more commonly known as acid turned just about everything into a milk and food coloring event. How refreshing to see children creating a color explosion in a pie plate rather than their head.

Kimba said...

I bet you were the highlight of the day.

Still can't believe you spent an entire day with the cub scouts. BLESSINGS IN HEAVEN.