Monday, November 19, 2012

Invitation to play: Frozen colored water

 I had these frozen a couple of days ago and took them out for a short play session while the dinner was cooking.

As we often do with potentially messy activities, we took them out to the staircase, so as to wash off right after.

The first thing we noticed was that the color was kind of trapped in the ice. That the ice was not uniformly colored but that the food coloring was concentrated in the middle of the ice.

This led to some discussion, but I hypothesize that it has to do with the density of the two liquids. Food coloring is basically a pigment (presumably a powder) dissolved in water and this increases the density of the water. I guess that when water freezes, it freezes from the outside, pushing the pigment molecules to the still liquid portion, making the liquid more concentrated in the center.
 Sophia lined all her ice discs by color and watched them melt
 Isnt that a beautiful yellow heart?
 The girls learnt a lot about how water flows: As one color joined another color, it didnt mix but pushed the other color away.
 Forming pretty rainbows
And abstract designs. 

1 comment:

  1. thanks so much for sharing on Craft Schooling Sunday, a beautiful flow of color!

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