We’ve made a rainbow glass before, but today we are doing a much more simple version and adding a bit of LEGO.
What you need
Vegetable oil
Water
LEGO or other small objects.
Instructions
Pour some water into a small glass container, then add about the same volume of liquid. They should separate.
You can see here red coloured water droplets in oil, they are very separate.
Then drop a couple of small objects into the mixture and observe what happens.
The science bit
Each of the liquids have a different mass of molecules or different numbers of parts squashed into the same volume of liquid, this makes them have different densities and therefore one can sit on top of the other – the more dense a liquid is the heavier it is.
Objects and liquids float on liquids of a higher density and sink through liquids of lower density. The LEGO brick sinks through the oil but floats on the water, while the coin sinks through both. The coin is therefore more dense than both the oil and the water. The plastic bug floating on the oil is less dense than both.
Come back next week for our creepy Halloween version.
Make sure you check out some of our other fun science for kids posts.
 |
Oooooh! So that was it! *hunts for rainbow glass tutorial!*
Fun! We need to do this – I think my kids would love it!
Fabulous. I love the easy way you’ve explained it. Pinning to my science board
Thank you. x
I have treasures that would be great for this lesson.
do let us know if you do it. x
Fantastic. Such a fascinating science experiment for kids!!! Love it.
PS thanks for sharing on Kids Get Crafty!
Pingback: Creepy density | Science Sparks
So cool!! I love it. Thank you for sharing on Sharing Saturday!!
Another great demo for teaching density would be with pop. What you need is a fish tank full of water, a diet coke, and a regular coke. When you put the two cans in the water, the diet coke will float and the regular coke will sink. Explain to the kids that since the diet coke does not have as much mass, it is less dense so it floats.