Need a great science experiment for St. Patrick’s day???
This rainbow experiment covers LOTS of different areas of math and science while also working fine motor skills!
So first, a little lesson on the science and math!
Water is not solid all the way through! If you get down to the microscopic level, water is made of super small things called molecules (made up of even smaller things called atoms!), but in-between the molecules is empty space! Very very very very small empty space, but still empty space 🙂
Density is, very basically stated, how much of that space is filled by molecules. (Again, I say very basically stated – if you’re a chemist don’t come after me lol)
Sugar is much more dense than water, but when we add them together we see something really cool! The sugar disappears!
The sugar molecules are actually spreading out and filling the space in the water! That means that 1 cup of water with sugar mixed in now has more molecules in it than 1 cup of water with no sugar making the sugar water heavier and denser!
Now to our experiment!
What we can do is make 4 different “solutions” – scientific word for mixes – of sugar water, each one with a different amount of sugar, and the heavier/denser ones will go towards the bottom!
Fill 4 glasses with the same amount of warm water (sugar dissolves faster and easier into warm water). This is a great opportunity for the kiddos to practice measuring and pouring!
I did one cup each, but only to make sure I had extra in case we had to try again…which we did lol
Add the sugar:
- Glass 1 – 1 tablespoon
- Glass 2 – 2 tablespoons
- Glass 3 – 3 tablespoons
- Glass 4 – 4 tablespoons
Mix until completely dissolved (clear).
Here are some great fine motor skills at work – grasping the spoon, using wrist rotations, all while holding the glass 🙂
Next add a couple drops of food coloring to each glass!
I did:
- Glass 1 – Red
- Glass 2 – Yellow
- Glass 3 – Green
- Glass 4 – Blue
You can reverse it if you like, as long as it always follows the ROYGBIV order.
Now for the tricky part!
How you add the colors together will depend on your kiddos.
If they are a master at fine motor control, then they may be able to do their own; however, the water has to be added INCREDIBLY gently using either a baster or eyedroppers so you might want to do a teacher one too as I did.
Starting with the glass that has the most sugar (in my case glass 4 aka blue), add your sugar solution to an empty glass or jar (I will call it the rainbow glass). The kiddos can do this one as there is no fear of colors mixing yet.
Next, using your baster or eyedropper, suck up some green sugar solution (glass 3), and very gently add it to the rainbow glass. I found it helped to let the solution just run down the side of the glass.
Do the same for glass 2 (yellow)…
and glass 1 (red)…and TADA!
Meanwhile, my friend was using his eye droppers to do his own which had turned a lovely brown-green color hahahaha he really liked to squirt it as hard as possible so I don’t think the solutions stood a chance of staying separate 😀
We did not experiment with exactly how gentle was necessary to keep the solutions separate (didn’t want to waste too much sugar lol) so it’s very possible my caution is extreme – I’ll leave it to your little chemists to experiment and decide 🙂
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