A Rainbow Adventure in Science

We are learning all about the scientific process in Year 7 and students recently completed a couple of quick experiments looking at what happens when you mix Smarties and water and then what happens when you mix milk, food dye and detergent. The focus was to predict, observe and explain what they did. Below are some photos of their results.

 

For those interested, the results of the Smartie experiment occur when the shell of the Smartie dissolves and the resulting solution, even though it shows different colours, has the same concentration of sugar. Therefore, the colours don’t mix.

The milk appears to mix with the food dye once the detergent is added because the detergent and fat molecules in the milk join together. They form such a strong bond that as they move through the mixture of milk and food colouring  they push this out of the way, causing it to have a constant swirling motion.