My kids are always begging to do science experiments (AKA completely destroy the kitchen), so I wanted to come up with three involving color and density that they hadn’t seen before. You can only do so many erupting volcanoes! These three experiments were a big hit with the kids – and I love them because they require minimal supplies, and cleanup was (relatively) easy.
1. Rainbow Density
- Kid Rubber Gloves (optional but adorable)
- Food coloring
- Purple: 1/4 cup honey + red and blue food coloring
- Blue: 1/4 cup blue dish soap
- Green: 1/4 cup water + green food coloring
- Yellow: 1/4 cup olive oil
- Red: 1/4 Rubbing alcohol + red food coloring
Please adjust measurements based on how big your bottle is, but the idea is add the liquids from most dense on the bottom to the least dense floating on top for a pretty awesome rainbow. As a fun twist (I’m actually going to say this is mandatory) add glitter and watch it try to break through the layers.
2. Magic Potion
- ¼ cup whole milk (key is whole because lots of fat!)
- Food coloring
- Dish soap
Pour milk onto a paper plate and add a few drops of food coloring onto the milk. Dip a q-tip into liquid dish soap and touch the milk with the q-tip. The dish soap breaks apart and dissolves the fat in the milk, so you get super pretty swirl. And just when you think it’s settled, it starts swirling again! Sort of awesome. Sort of creepy.
3. Oil & Water Beads
This one is so simple! Just have the kids drop the colored water into the oil with pipettes and little beads of color form. This works because water molecules are more attracted to each other than to oil so they don’t dissolve!
