Quiet time, science time: A color explosion

Has your preschooler stopped taking naps?  Have they stopped even staying quiet during quiet time? Usually for me after 20 minutes of quiet time, my preschooler is bored.  So how did I bust her boredom this past weekend? I reached for this simple science experiment.  We were both mesmerized for several minutes!

First, we poured cold milk into a bowl and placed a few drops of food coloring in the center of the milk. Then we put dish soap on a Q-tip and touched the center of the food coloring.

Check this out….

Pretty neat,huh?

We tried this experiment several times before getting the best result. Here is what we learned:

• Dawn dish soap and whole milk work the best
• Heating the milk for 30 seconds makes the best color ‘explosion’
• Pouring the soap directly in the milk (instead of using a Q-tip) makes the reaction last longer

Here is the result with warm whole milk and Dawn dish soap.

Now that was cool!

Here’s the science: Milk contains fat molecules and dish soap has properties that want to attach to the fat. By adding food coloring you can see when these molecules move around to find each other!   At first the color moves quickly but when it has finished mixing the movement slows down and stops.   Here is a great explanation of the chemistry that is happening.

After our experiment Allie wanted to paint with the colored milk.

I thought she made a lovely painting and I enjoyed our quiet time-science time together!  I hope this post helps with your with quiet time too!