Year 7 Science

Here’s something cool you can try at home.

It’s a separation technique called Chromatography.

Take a round coffee filter (or similar round and absorbent piece of paper) and draw on it with a black texta or felt tip pen near the centre of the paper. Next, fill a cup with water. Place your filter paper ontop of the cup of water. Take something small and heavy, like a pencil sharpener or a coin and place in the centre of your filter paper so the filter paper is touching the water just in the very middle. Sit back and wait to see the results.

You should have made a cool piece of science based art! What’s happening? Well, the water will slowly creep up the paper using something called capillary action. As it does this, all the different colours that make up the black ink in your pen will separate out. The slower running inks will be closer to the water line and the faster running inks will travel further towards the edge of your paper.

If it turned out, why not try some different colours or different patterns.