When Art Meets Science

I just love when art meets science. Last month we got to introduce our kids to one of my favorite artsy science experiments.

It's fun and fairly simple. You will need:

• A shallow pan or bowl
• Milk
• Food coloring
• Dish soap

Fill the pan with milk. Drop several drops of different colored food coloring in different places in the milk. Then, squirt a small drop of dish soap in the middle of the dish soap. The colors will start to swirl as the dish soap reacts to the protein in the milk.  Like this...

Isn't that cool!  Of course, if you want to keep this "artwork" to hang on your wall then you'll have to take some pictures like we did.  I love how this also caught the reflection of the lights above our table.  Pretty cool!

LESSON IN COLORS
Use red, yellow, and blue food coloring to help teach younger children what colors are created when those colors mix.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND IT
I found this description of what causes the colors to swirl on About.com:

"The detergent lowers the surface tension of the liquid so that the food coloring is free to flow throughout the milk. The detergent reacts with the protein in the milk, altering the shape of those molecules and setting them in motion."

You can read the whole description at the bottom of About.com's Magic Colored Milk Science Project Page.

This post is participating in the following memes, where you can find
a lot of other creative ideas for kids!

 



Little Masterpieces

Get Crafty

Throwback Thursday