4th of July colorful candy experiment
Celebrate the 4th of July with a fun and easy science experiment! We’ll use colorful candies to make a beautiful display. This activity helps kids learn about how colors mix and move in water. Get your red, white, and blue candies ready, and let’s explore the science behind their bright colors. It’s a sweet and fun way to learn solubility while enjoying the holiday!
Materials:
- A white plate
- red blue and white candy
- Hot water (warm water is OK)
What to do?
- Heat water in a kettle (they dont have to boil).
- Arrange the candies on the plate
- Carefully pour the hot water into the center of the plate until it covers the candies up to half their height.
- watch what is happening.
How does this happen?
In this experiment we arrange colored candies in a plate and pour boiling water, immediately the color of the candies starts to dissolve in the water and move towards the center of the plate, but the colors do not mix. Why does this happen?
It turns out that water with slightly different properties such as different salinity, temperature or density do not mix well, in our candies each color consists of a different substance that gives the water slightly different properties, therefore the water does not mix, and a sort of barrier is created between the colors.
This phenomenon is of great importance in maintaining the ecological balance in the oceans. Even in the oceans, the water is not uniform, there are layers of cold water and layers of warm water that do not mix, there are water rich in nutrients and water poor in nutrients, water rich in oxygen and water poor in oxygen, all these layers do not mix well, and this fact affects and maintains the delicate ecological balance of the oceans.
Keep researching:
What will happen if instead of pouring hot water we pour cold water? Will we still see the same phenomenon?
– Of course, but the color will take longer to dissolve and therefore instead of seeing results in a few seconds, we will have to wait almost an hour and sometimes more.
