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science for tinies: chromatography part I
Jan. 30th, 2012 06:30 pmProject: Can We Unmix Colors?
Materials: water, art paper, construction paper, food dye
Explanatory details: This experiment is a work in progress! Today was a partial success but I definitely want to run it again and improve it. For our first try today, I spotted food dye in four "neon" colors onto strips of two different kinds of paper, construction paper and paper from a drawing pad labelled as suitable for sketching or watercolor. I bent the strips to hang them over the sides of a four-chambered former hummus container, so that each color of food dye had its own compartment, which was good because right away one of the pinks fell in and dyed the water red, and not long thereafter the green-dye construction paper soaked up enough water to pull *it* down into the water and dye it green.
How did it go: The "art paper" turned out not to wick at all, but the construction paper did - slowly enough that Junie had long since lost interest and been provided with ducks, but we reconvened to inspect our results. And in fact as the dyes had spread out up the paper, they had successfully separated somewhat! We could tell that the blue had just one color in it, blue, but the red seemed to have two parts, a red part that had moved quickly and a more magenta part left behind, and, best of all, the purple seemed to have *three* parts, the fast-moving red, blue behind it, and the left-behind magenta.
Things we talked about: We can see how the purple dye is made of red and blue dyes, which makes sense, because red and blue make purple.
What Junie got out of it: This one was definitely more for me than for her. She enjoyed seeing the water turn colors when the dyes got into it, and she gamely looked at the strips and discussed what we saw, but I didn't even try to get into an explanation of what was going on. Maybe next time? I'm curious to try it again with paper towels, to see if we can speed it up while still getting separation, and to try hanging the strips in a more secure fashion, maybe from paperclips in glasses.
Materials: water, art paper, construction paper, food dye
Explanatory details: This experiment is a work in progress! Today was a partial success but I definitely want to run it again and improve it. For our first try today, I spotted food dye in four "neon" colors onto strips of two different kinds of paper, construction paper and paper from a drawing pad labelled as suitable for sketching or watercolor. I bent the strips to hang them over the sides of a four-chambered former hummus container, so that each color of food dye had its own compartment, which was good because right away one of the pinks fell in and dyed the water red, and not long thereafter the green-dye construction paper soaked up enough water to pull *it* down into the water and dye it green.
How did it go: The "art paper" turned out not to wick at all, but the construction paper did - slowly enough that Junie had long since lost interest and been provided with ducks, but we reconvened to inspect our results. And in fact as the dyes had spread out up the paper, they had successfully separated somewhat! We could tell that the blue had just one color in it, blue, but the red seemed to have two parts, a red part that had moved quickly and a more magenta part left behind, and, best of all, the purple seemed to have *three* parts, the fast-moving red, blue behind it, and the left-behind magenta.
Things we talked about: We can see how the purple dye is made of red and blue dyes, which makes sense, because red and blue make purple.
What Junie got out of it: This one was definitely more for me than for her. She enjoyed seeing the water turn colors when the dyes got into it, and she gamely looked at the strips and discussed what we saw, but I didn't even try to get into an explanation of what was going on. Maybe next time? I'm curious to try it again with paper towels, to see if we can speed it up while still getting separation, and to try hanging the strips in a more secure fashion, maybe from paperclips in glasses.
