This is a really cool science experiment. (food color in milk science experiment). You just need food colors, milk, cotton swabs and dish soap to do this experiment. There is a beautiful little experiment card in this post. You can take a print out or save this experiment on Pinterest.
It’s so easy but the results are really good. And this is one that can be done relatively unsupervised if you wish because none of the products are dangerous to kids! Though, personally, I love to see how it works just as much as the kids do.
Materials required for Food color in milk science experiment:
- One or two cups of milk
- Liquid food coloring
- Dish soap
- Cotton swabs
- Dinner plate or shallow dish
- Small container
Procedure
- Pour milk onto a plate. (It’s ok if you see bubbles.)
- Drip a few drops of food coloring of choice in the center of the milk. You can get creative with where you drop the drops and space them out how you wish. (Note: Food coloring may spread out slightly as pictured.)
- Dip a cotton swab into the dish soap.
- Place the cotton swab in the middle of the colors and watch what happens! You should see the colors start to spread out towards the sides of the plate and change over time. You can repeat this step a few times.
Tips for Food color in milk science experiment:
- Kids can take their cotton swab and “draw” or “swirl” in the colors. Eventually, the colors will mix together until the milk becomes one color.
- It doesn’t matter what colors you use, but contrasting colors will be more obvious and coordinating colors will be more subtle. It all depends on the effect you want to see.
Experiment Card:
Milk Experiment
Materials
- One or two cups of milk
- Liquid food coloring
- Dish soap
- Cotton swabs
- Dinner plate or shallow dish
- Small container
Instructions
- 1) Pour milk on the plate or a shallow dish
- 2) Drip a few drops of food coloring of choice in the center of the milk. You can get creative with where you drop the drops and space them out how you wish. (Note: Food coloring may spread out.)
- 3) Dip a cotton swab into the dish soap.
- 4) Place the cotton swab in the middle of the colors and watch what happens! You should see the colors start to spread out towards the sides of the plate and change over time. You can repeat this step a few times. Tip: Kids can take their cotton swab and “draw” or “swirl” in the colors. Eventually, the colors will mix together until the milk becomes one color.
- 5) If you allow the milk to sit a while before all colors are mixed completely together, you can see the milk change in neat ways as pictured here.
Notes
Read the complete post on sciencetidings.com to understand why this happens.
Explanation:
Milk is mostly water, but it also contains vitamins, minerals, proteins, and tiny droplets of fat suspended in solution. Fats and proteins are sensitive to changes in the surrounding solution (the milk).
Like other oils, milk fat is a non-polar molecule and that means it doesn’t dissolve in water. When soap is mixed in, however, the non-polar (hydrophobic) portion of soap breaks up and collects the non-polar fat molecules. Then the polar surface of the micelle (hydrophilic) connects to a polar water molecule with the fat held inside the soap micelle. Literally, soap molecules are teaming up with fat molecules in milk and help those fat molecules to move around.
The molecules of fat bend, roll, twist, and contort in all directions along with soap molecules. During all of this fat molecule gymnastics, the food coloring molecules are bumped and shoved everywhere, providing an easy way to observe all the invisible activity. As the soap becomes evenly mixed with the milk, the action slows down and eventually stops. This is why milk with a higher fat content produces a better explosion of color—there’s just more fat to combine with all of those soap molecules.
Try adding another drop of soap to see if there’s any more movement. If so, you discovered there are still more fat molecules that haven’t found a soap partner at the big color dance. Add another drop of soap to start the process again.
Recommended Products:
If you are looking for more easy science experiments, I recommend this ‘Kitchen Science lab for kids‘ from Amazon.
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