Sunday, September 12, 2010

Tie Dye Milk


Our science experiment this week resulted in an explosion of color in a dish of milk. 

  • We poured milk into a glass dish making sure to cover the bottom of the dish completely.
  • C and R worked together to put four drops of different colored food coloring in the middle of the dish, keeping the colors separate
  • Then, they dipped cotton swabs in dish detergent and put the soapy swabs in the center of the food coloring drips
  • This is what happened:

The science behind this: 
Milk contains fats and proteins, and both are sensitive to changes in the surrounding solution.  Adding the soap alters the chemical bonds that hold the proteins in the solution, and the molecules of fat and protein move in all directions.   The soap also breaks the surface tension, allowing the colors to spread.  They both thought this was a very cool experiment. 


I am linking this to Science Sunday at Adventures in Mommydom.

14 comments:

An Almost Unschooling Mom said...

We love the magic milk experiment!

April said...

We just did this yesterday! I haven't blogged about it yet. We have been doing rainbow things so this was something to go along with that. Coming thru from Science sun

Julie said...

Fun! We have that new science kit all about colors, but I don't think they include the milk experiment. We'll have to try it someday.

TMCPhoto said...

How cool! I have plans for doing paper marbling in the future but this looks like a lot of fun that we can do even sooner. The Peanut will love the whole thing and I'm sure that she'll even get some of the science too

Debbie said...

This is such a fun experiment. Kid's love it.

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

This is a fun experiment. We did it too, but next time I will use a bigger container like yours. Ours became muddy green pretty quickly, but Anna still enjoyed drinking her magic milk. We didn't use soap in ours, by the way - we just poked the surface with a toothpick to break surface tension.

Robbins Zoo said...

We will HAVE to try this!! Thank You for sharing.

MaryAnne said...

Very nice! I'll have to do this with my kids sometime...

Robbins Zoo said...

I just couldn't wait. This looked like so much fun. We have already done it.. LOL My 3 year and 1 year old loved it! Bunny (3) got to use the Q-Tips.. and Bug (1) watched and clapped when the colors started to swirl.
I post it (with a link) on my facebook. I will put it on my blog when we get back.
Thanks again for sharing!

Jenny said...

That is neat! We'll have to try it sometime.

Anonymous said...

So cool! I love the way it turned out.

Eva said...

Great experiment! we did this with my class before but I have yet to try it with my daughter. :)

Christianne @ Little Page Turners said...

Looks like fun! I'd probably try it without the soap, since we spend a fortune on milk (well, soy milk) around here.

Brimful Curiosities said...

This is one of our favorite kitchen experiments. It's like milk fireworks when you hit the milk with dish detergent.