Catch A Rainbow

Red, blue and yellow are called the primary colors.  Just by mixing these colors, you can get
all the colors of the rainbow:

RED + YELLOW = ORANGE

RED + BLUE = PURPLE

BLUE + YELLOW = GREEN

What you need:

 red, blue and yellow food color
 1 cup milk
 dish soap
 shallow bowl
 Optional:  Catch a Rainbow Printable Activity Sheet
 Optional:  The Color Wheel

    

Directions:
 Pour 1 cup of milk into the bowl
    
 Add 3 drops of red food color to one edge of the
bowl 
o 1/3 of the way away, add 3 drops of blue
food color
o 1/3 of the way away add 3 drops of
yellow
o don't mix or jiggle the bowl
    
 Squeeze a drop of dish soap in the center of the
bowl  
  
 Record what you see.
  
 What do you think happened?

What Happened:
The dish soap does not mix with the milk.  Instead it floats on top and spreads over the
surface.  As it spreads, it grabs the food color we dropped into it.  Where the colors meet, they
combine to form new colors:

RED + YELLOW = ORANGE

RED + BLUE = PURPLE

BLUE + YELLOW = GREEN

Have you ever turned a liquid into a solid just by tapping on it? In this experiment you make
just such a liquid.

For this experiment you will need:

 corn starch (about ¼ cup, or 60 cm3)

 water (about ¼ cup, or 60 cm3)
 a bowl for mixing
 newspaper

Place a sheet of newspaper flat on a table. Put the mixing bowl in the middle of the
newspaper. Add ¼ cup of dry cornstarch to the bowl. Add about 1/8 cup (2 tablespoons, or 30
cm3) of water to the corn starch and stir slowly. Add water slowly to the mixture, with
stirring, until all of the powder is wet.

Continue to add water until the cornstarch acts like a liquid when you stir it slowly. When you
tap on the liquid with your finger, it shouldn't splash, but rather will become hard. If your
mixture is too liquid, add more cornstarch. Your goal is to create a mixture that feels like a
stiff liquid when you stir it slowly, but feels like a solid when you tap on it with your finger or
a spoon.
Scoop the cornstarch mixture into the palm of your hand, then slowly work it into a ball. As
long as you keep pressure on it by rubbing it between your hands, it stays solid. Stop rubbing,
and it “melts” into a puddle in your palm. Can you think of other tests you can do with it?

Why does the cornstarch mixture behave like this?

Think of a busy sidewalk. The easiest way to get through a crowd of people is to move slowly
and find a path between people. If you just took a running start and headed straight for the
crowd of people, you would quickly slam into someone and you wouldn't get very far. This is
similar to what happens in the cornstarch mixture. The solid cornstarch acts like a crowd of
people. Pressing your finger slowly into the mixture allows the cornstarch to move out of the
way, but tapping the mixture quickly doesn't allow the solid cornstarch particles to slide past
each other and out of the way of your finger.

We use the term “viscosity” to describe the resistance of a liquid to flow. Water, which has a
low viscosity, flows easily. Honey, at room temperature, has a higher viscosity and flows
more slowly than water. But if you warm honey up, its viscosity drops, and it flows more
easily. Most fluids behave like water and honey, in that their viscosity depends only on
temperature. We call such fluids “Newtonian,” since their behavior was first described by
Isaac Newton (when he wasn’t discovering the laws of gravity or developing the calculus).
The cornstarch mixture you made is called “non-Newtonian” since its viscosity also depends
on the force applied to the liquid or how fast an object is moving through the liquid.

Other examples of non-Newtonian fluids include ketchup, silly putty, and quicksand.
Quicksand is like the cornstarch mixture: if you struggle to escape quicksand, you apply
pressure to it and it becomes hard, making it more difficult to escape. The recommended way
to escape quicksand is to slowly move toward solid ground; you might also lie down on it,
thus distributing your weight over a wider area and reducing the pressure. Ketchup is the
opposite: its viscosity decreases under pressure. That’s why shaking a bottle of ketchup makes
it easier to pour.

Disposal: First dilute the cornstarch mixture with plenty of water before pouring it down the
drain. Why? What do think would happen to the semi-solid, semi-liquid form that you
prepared if pressure were applied to it by other water in the drain? Yes – a plugged drain.
 Soft Shelled Eggs
What you need:
 1 egg (hard boiled is less messy if you accidentally break it, but you can use a raw one)
 1 cup vinegar
 clear jar or glass
 Optional:  Soft Shelled Eggs Printable Activity Sheet

      

Directions:
 Pour 1 cup of vinegar into jar
    
 Add the egg  
  
 Record what you see (bubbles rising from the egg)
  
 Leave the egg in the vinegar for one day.
  
 Remove the egg and feel it.
  
 Record your observations (the egg shell will be soft)

What happened:
Eggs contain something called "calcium carbonate".  This is what makes them hard.  

Vinegar is an acid known as acetic acid.

When calcium carbonate (the egg) and acetic acid (the vinegar) combine, a chemical reaction
takes place and carbon dioxide (a gas) is released.  This is what the bubbles are made of.

The chemical reaction keeps happening until all of the carbon in the egg is used up -- it takes
about a day.

When you take the egg out of the vinegar it's soft because all of the carbon floated out of the
egg in those little bubbles.

NOW TRY THIS:

Leave the same egg sitting out on the table for another day.
Now feel it again.

It's hard!

The calcium left in the egg shell stole the carbon back from the carbon dioxide that's in the air
we breath.

- OR -

If you were using a raw egg, once the shell has softened, you can place the egg in water and
it'll absorb and expand via osmosis until the shell finally
bursts. Materials Needed:

 Salt
 Sugar
 2 eggs
 Water
Changing Egg Density  2 glass jars (large enough
to hold a few cups of
Experiment: Does an egg float or sink in water? What if water)
we change the density?


One sixth grade science project that is a lot of fun is to see

if an egg will float when placed in water, and what will happen to the egg if you change the
density by adding sugar or salt. For this experiment, you will need two glass jars that are large
enough to hold a few cups of water each, two eggs, some salt, some sugar and some water.

First, you can put a few cups of water into each jar, and then place one egg into each jar of
plain water. Do the eggs float in the water or sink to the bottom? Next, take one jar and add a
teaspoon of sugar. Did it make the egg float? (Or sink if the egg was already floating?) Add a
few more teaspoons of sugar, does it change at all? Take the other glass jar with the egg in it
and add a teaspoon of salt. Did it make the egg float? (Or sink if the egg was already
floating?)

EGG IN A BOTTLE

What You Need:

1 hard-boiled egg, peeled

1 long-necked bottle
3 matches

What To Do:
1) Hard boil an egg and allow to cool. After the egg cools, peel off the shell.
2) Place a long-necked bottle on your kitchen table (or any table free from flammable debris)
3) Have an adult light 3 matches and place in the bottle (all matches at once, not one at a time)
4) Quickly put the egg on top of the bottle opening

3 minutes

Demonstrates scientific principles:

The matches heats the air, which causes it to expand. When the matches extinguish, it causes
the air to contract as it cools. A lower pressure is created within the bottle, than on the outside.
The pressure outside the bottle causes the egg to get sucked into the bottle.

Heat causes most solids and liquids to expand, and cooling causes them to contract. Atoms or
molecules within the solids vibrate more quickly with the increased heat. This causes the
solid/liquid to become larges, and when cooled, become smaller.

Lemon Fizz Materials

 baking soda (sodium bicarbonate)

 lemon juice or a lemon cut into quarters
 liquid dishwashing soap (e.g., Dawn or Joy)
 food coloring (optional)
 spoon or straw
 narrow glass or cup

steps

Put a spoonful (about a teaspoon) of baking soda into a glass.

 Stir in a squirt of dishwashing liquid.

 Add a drop or two of food coloring, if you want colored bubbles.
 Squeeze lemon juice into the mixture or pour in lemon juice. Other citrus fruit juices work
too, but lemon juice seems to work the best. As you stir the juice into the baking soda and
detergent, bubbles will form that will start to push up and out of the glass.
 You can extend the reaction by adding more lemon juice and baking soda.
 The bubbles are long-lasting. You can't drink the mixture, but you can still use it for washing
dishes.

How It Works

The sodium bicarbonate of the baking soda reacts with the citric acid in lemon juice to form carbon
dioxide gas. The gas bubbles are trapped by the dishwashing soap, forming fizzy bubbles.