For a fun and simple hands-on lesson in color mixing and/or absorption, try this easy experiment with your young learners.
What you’ll need:
6 clear glasses or mason jars
6 folded paper towels
Water
Food coloring – red, blue, and yellow
Optional Supplies:
Flowers
Timer
Celery sticks
Observation journal
Fill each glass of water halfway and arrange them in a circle. Add the red coloring to a glass, skip a jar, add yellow to the next, skip another jar, add blue to the last.
Fold your paper towel into a narrow sheet placing one end in one glass and the other end in the next. Repeat with the next glass and continue the circle.
Ask your child to observe what they see in a science journal. You may want to suggest that they draw time lapse pictures of what they observe or take pictures with a camera if they have access to one. You can set a timer or, if you have a Hyperlapse app on your smart phone, your use your Hyperlapse app over the next several moments to see how the primary colors are absorbed in the paper towel and the secondary colors are created.
Keep the fun going! To build on this experiment, see how other objects absorb the colored water. Ask your child to place flowers (with long and short stems) or long or short celery sticks in each color. Compare what happens differently between the long- and short-stemmed objects.
You can also place paper towels in the jars for varying amounts of time and ask your child to compare the brightness of each color absorbed in the paper towel after 1-3 hours.
One last variation might be to change the amounts of water in each glass. Begin with the colored glasses nearly full and the clear ones mostly empty. Watch as the water level changes in the glasses.
Make sure that your child records all the observations and pictures in their journal to review later.
The science behind it:
The colored water travels up the paper towel by a process known as capillary action. Capillary action is the ability of a liquid to flow against gravity, upward in narrow spaces. This is the same process that lets water climb all the way from a plant’s roots to the flowers and leaves up high.
Enjoy!
