Monday, March 18, 2013

A lesson for Mom


Soooo we are on a bit of a science kick right now and I see so many experiments in books and online that I want to do them all!

On Pinterest I saw a colour mixing experiment that I knew we had to do. I gathered the materials and we set to work. I only looked at the picture and figured it was easy enough. I did not read the instructions - MISTAKE! I saw the finished result and without thinking I put water in all three of the glasses for each colour mix, added one primary colour of food colouring to each of the outside glasses (correct) and used strips of paper towel to connect the outer glasses with the centre one - correct. We watched in anticipation as the paper towel absorbed the coloured water and crept up the paper towel where it eventually met the clear water that had travelled up from the central glass. The colour stopped travelling. I didn't see what was so obvious. After some times had passed, we ditched the paper towel strips replacing them with coffee filter strips. Same thing happened (of course), then I replaced the coffee filter strips with tissue strips and yes of course the same thing happened. I was getting kind of miffed then it dawned on me and I felt so silly. I dumped the water from the central glass of each set and replaced the tissue with fresh paper towel strips and within a very short time the experiment worked. The paper towel absorbed the coloured water and transferred it to the empty glass where upon the 2 primary colours mixed and we cheered!!

Here's one of our pretty but failed attempts.....


and sometime later our successful experiment in absorption and colour mixing




Our orange didn't come out great because we ran out of yellow food colouring but it was definitely a red-orange 


 The purple was awesome but my lighting wasn't!




This is my favourite picture because it was actually working!!!!!



Lesson learned - I will read instructions next time!!!

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