Required materials

Salt (1 or more teaspoons) Tap water 1/4 cup of olive or vegetable oil Food coloring (red, green, blue, and any other color you like) Large clear glass Eye dropper (optional if your food coloring is not in a dropper)

Estimated Experiment Time

About 5 to 10 minutes

Step-By-Step Procedure

1. Fill the glass with tap water, about 2/3rds of the way. You'll need to add the oil later, so make sure there is enough room left in the cup. 2. Pour the oil into the glass slowly. The oil will float on top of the water (don't try to mix it in). 3. Add several drops of different food coloring to the water and oil. 4. Slowly sprinkle 1 teaspoon of salt into the glass. Observe what happens to the oil and water mixture. Groovy!

Note
Add several drops of different food coloring for the best effects. It's like a lava lamp in your glass!

Observation
What happens to the liquid when water is added? What would happen if you add another teaspoon of salt? What if you add SEVERAL teaspoons of salt (give it a try and see)? How do you think another substance would affect the oil and water? What if you tried using sugar, sand, or even coffee grinds?

Result
Oil is lighter than the water, which is why it floats at the top. This is similar to what happens during oil spills on the ocean. The salt, on the other hand, is heavier than the oil. When it's added to the glass the salt begins to sink to the bottom of the glass, taking some of the oil with it. When the salt finally dissolves, the oil is released and again floats to the surface above the water. This is a similar concept to how the Lava Lamp functions. The glob in the lamp is comprised of a wax that rises and dances as it's heated from below. It expands as it becomes less dense than the liquid around it, causing the trippy sequence that was the staple of the 60's.

Magic colored science project Milk and Food Coloring Project Anne Helmenstine More Images (2)

Milk Soy Milk VS Cow Milk Coconut Milk Dairy Almond Milk Cheese Rice Milk Drink

If you add food coloring to milk, not a whole lot happens, but it only takes one simple ingredient to turn the milk into a swirling color wheel. Here is what you do.

Magic Milk Materials

2% or whole milk food coloring dishwashing liquid cotton swab plate

Magic Milk Instructions 1. Pour enough milk onto a plate to cover the bottom. Drop food coloring onto the milk. I made a video so you can see what to expect. Dip a cotton swab in dishwashing detergent liquid. Touch the coated swab to the milk in the center of the plate. Don't stir the milk; it isn't necessary. The colors will swirl on their own as soon as the detergent contacts liquid.

2.
3. 4. 5. the

How It Works

Milk consists of a lot of different types of molecules, including fat, protein, sugars, vitamins, and minerals. If you had just touched a clean cotton swab to the milk (try it!), not much would have happened. The cotton is absorbent, so you would have created a current in the milk, but you wouldn't have seen anything especially dramatic happen.

When you introduce detergent to the milk, several things happen at once. The detergent lowers the surface tension of the liquid so that the food coloring is free to flow throughout the milk. The detergent reacts with the protein in the milk, altering the shape of those molecules and setting them in motion. The reaction between the detergent and the fat forms micelles, which is how detergent helps to lift grease off of dirty dishes. As the micelles form, the pigments in the food coloring get pushed around. Eventually equilibrium is reached, but the swirling of the colors continues for quite a while before stopping.

So you know where the color comes from, but why milk and liquid soap? The main job of dish soap it to go after fat and break it down. Usually the fat is on dishes from the food we eat, but fat is also in whole milk. When you drop the liquid soap onto the tray, it tried to break down the fat in the milk. While it was doing that, it caused the colors to scatter and mix creating a very colorful display. Have fun!

Blue is not a usual daisy color, but you can make a blue daisy using chemistry! Frances Twitty, Getty Images More Images (2)

It's easy to make your own colored flowers, especially carnations and daisies, but there are a couple of tricks that help ensure great results. Here's how you do it.

Colored Flower Materials

fresh flowers, preferably white - don't use wilted flowers since they might not be able to absorb water well. Good choices include daisies and carnations. food coloring warm water

Make Colored Flowers

Trim the stems of your flowers so they aren't excessively long.

Make a slanted cut at the base of the stem under water. The cut is slanted so that the stem won't sit flat on the bottom of the container. A flat cut can prevent the flower from taking in water. Make the cut underwater to prevent air bubbles from forming in the tiny tubes at base of the stem, which would prevent water/color from being drawn up. Add food coloring to a glass. You're looking at about 20-30 drops of food coloring per half cup of warm water. Warm water will be taken more readily than cold water. Set the damp stem of the flower in the colored water. The petals should become colored after a few hours. It may take as long as 24 hours, however, depending on the flower. You can set the colored flowers in plain water or flower preservative, but they will continue to drink water, changing the pattern of the color over time.

Getting Fancy

You can slit the stem up the middle and put each side in a different color to get bi-colored flowers. What do you think you will get if you put half of the stem in blue dye and half in yellow dye? What do you think will happen if you take a colored flower and put its stem in dye of a different color?

How It Works

A few different processes are involved in plant 'drinking' or transpiration. As water evaporates from flowers and leaves, the attractive force between water molecules called cohesion pulls more water along. Water is pulled up through tiny tubes (xylem) that run up a plant's stem. Although gravity might want to pull the water back down toward the ground, water sticks to itself and these tubes. This capillary action keeps water in the xylem in much the same way as water stays in a straw when you suck water through it, except evaporation and biochemical reactions provide the initial upward pull.

One cup of milk

4 teaspoons of white vinegar A bowl A strainer Adult help

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Ask your friendly adult to heat up the milk until it is hot, but not boiling Now ask the adult to carefully pour the milk into the bowl Add the vinegar to the milk and stir it up with a spoon for about a minute Now the fun part, pour the milk through the strainer into the sink - careful it may be hot! Left behind in the strainer is a mass of lumpy blobs. When it is cool enough, you can rinse the blobs off in water while you press them together . Now just mold it into a shape and it will harden in a few days. - Cool!

Plastic? In milk? Well, sort of. You made a substance called CASEIN. It's from the latin word meaning "cheese." CasEin occurs when the protien in the milk meets the acid in the vinegar. The casein in milk does not mix with the acid and so it forms blobs. True plastics, called poymers, are a little different. If you want to make a true plastic and learn more about polymers, try the Homemade Slime experiment. Have fun!