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As seen on ITV's Alan Titchmarsh show
Here is some more information about the experiments featured on the Alan Titchmarsh show on Wednesday 26th October. For links to more experiments from the previous show on 5th October, scroll down...
Colour changing milk
What you need:
Full fat milk at room temperature
Food colouring
A plate or shallow dish
Cotton buds
Washing up liquid
What to do:
Pour a small amount of milk onto the plate – about 1 cm
deep. Carefully put small drops of food colouring at different points on the
surface. Now pick up the cotton bud and carefully put a drop of washing up
liquid on the end and dip it into the centre of the milk.
What happens?
The colours rush across the surface of the milk and start to
mix in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways. Washing up liquid is a kind of
detergent, and detergent likes to join together water with fat (or grease)
which is why it is so good at cleaning dishes! The washing up liquid tries to
get the water and fat in the milk to mix and as it does this it creates
currents through the milk. This movement in the milk takes the food colouring
with it to create the crazy mix of colours.
Invisible marbles
Water beads/jelly marbles (available in larger gardening
stores, florists or online from www.waterbubbles.co.uk)
Water
A tall clear container or glass vase
What to do
Put the beads in a tall glass of water and wait. It takes
about 4 hours for the beads to absorb water, less if you use warm water. Once
they are about the size of a marble they should have become almost invisible in
the water. They get about 200 times bigger so you will need a container large
enough to hold them when they expand. Once you have them hidden in the water
you can just plunge your hand in a ‘magically’ pull out the hidden marbles.
What happens?
The marbles are made of a very absorbent polymer (just a
long chain of molecules) and they take in about 200 times their own volume in
water. When they are fully grown then are made up of more than 99% water. Light
bends when it travels through different things and this is called refraction.
The light refracts through the water and the marbles in exactly the same way so
you can’t see where they are. When the marbles aren’t in water the light
travels through the air and then bends when it hits the marbles. This means you
can see them when they are out of water but not when they are completely
surrounded by it.
Tea bag rocket
NB Children should not do this experiment without close adult supervision
What you need
Tea bags (the one-cup kind with string and tag)
Scissors
Matches or a lighter
Heat proof plate or chopping board
What you do
Cut the top of the tea bag off at the end where the tag is
attached and carefully open out the bag and empty out the tea. You should have
a long cylinder of empty tea bag. Stand this upright on the heat-resistant
plate or board. Make sure you have no flammable materials too close to the
experiment. Now light the cylinder at the top and stand back.
What happens?
The tea bag burns from the top down, heating the air as it
goes. The warm air in the cylinder is more spread out than the cold air around
it and so it rises. As it rises it takes the remains of the tea bag with it up
into the air.
DIY Rockets
Make your very own rocket out of stuff you can find in the kitchen or bathroom
Kitchen Slime
It's weird and wonderful, and very messy to make but all in the name of science...
Smoke rings
Beautiful shapes of moving air that you can make using every day stuff...
