Sunday, April 18, 2010

Science Sunday/Color Fun


We tried this same experiment back in March. The first time we used milk, food coloring, and dish soap. We didn’t get the results that we had hoped for.

In a quest to get just what I wanted and to teach Selena just what I wanted to teach her, we tried this experiment again but exchanged the dish soap for cooking oil.

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I put equal parts of milk in each of the three containers. I put two drops each of blue and yellow in the first cup of milk, two drops each of red and yellow in the second cup of milk. and two drops each of red and blue in the third cup of milk.

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We then added about a 1/2 tablespoon of oil to each and watched what happened.

100_2523 The longer we watched and gently tapped the cups the more the colors swirled around. There was more going on though, as Selena discovered, the colors stayed on top of the milk and did not mix into the milk.

100_2526She found this pretty interesting, and commented after going through the pictures of our first attempt that the oil made the colors float.

100_2202  The last picture is from our first attempt at this experiment. You can obviously see that we had success using the oil compared to using the dish soap.

We talked about  how oil and milk or water do not mix, that the oil will float.

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6 comments:

  1. Hmmm...soap is an emulsifier, breaking down the fat in the milk, and making the colors swirl...I know the water soluble color, won't mix with the oil...but I'll have to look into it's effect on the milk...intersting!

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  2. We've done the color mix before, just not with the oil. Pretty neat. It's a fun experiment to watch, especially if it works right.

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  3. How cool that you found a way to make it work. I found a cool one to do with pepper. You sprinkle pepper all over the top of the water and then you get a little bit of dish soap on your finger and put it on the top of the water. The soap will drive the pepper away. It's really cool.

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  4. That's great that you found a way to make it work!

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  5. This sounds interesting. I keep wanting to do this experiment, and maybe I'll try it both ways. Selena looks so interested in her experiment - so neat!

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