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Density Trick with Water

August 5, 2013 By Emma Vanstone 7 Comments

Today’s activity is super simple, but very impressive and a great little science density trick to show your friends!

coloured water science trick - density trick for kids

What you need

  • 2 glasses the same
  • A piece of card
  • Food colouring
  • Salt
  • Water

Density Trick Instructions

Density trick for kids
  • Fill both glasses with water, right up to the brim.
  • Add food colouring and salt to one glass. I didn’t measure the salt, but added a generous amount.
  • Place the card over the glass containing just water and carefully place it over the glass of coloured water and salt.
  • Even more carefully remove the cardboard.

Why doesn’t the water mix?

The salt water has a higher density than the plain water, and so stays at the bottom.

You can see here what happens if you don’t add the salt. The plain water mixes with the coloured water.

density trick for kids

If you put the salt water on top, it all mixes, this is because the more dense salt water tries to move down to the bottom.

Density trick - science for kids

I would recommend doing this science trick over a sink, or somewhere you don’t mind getting wet.

Cool science for kids - density trick

Mom to Posh Little Divas did an activity last week with water and card where you can lift a glass of water up and the card stays stuck to it. This is a demonstration of air pressure, and would be great to do at the same time as this activity.

More density examples

Summer Density

Creepy Density

Make a water balloon sink

Apple Bobbing

Floating and density

Sinking and Floating

Density trick for kids - why doesn't salty water and normal water mix? #scienceforkids #scienceexperiments  #densityforkids
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Filed Under: Science Experiments for Kids Tagged With: Density, density experiments, fun science for kids, makign science fun, Salt, salt density, Science for kids, Science Magic, water salt density

Previous Post: « Summer Density
Next Post: How to make a red cabbage indicator »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Pinkoddy

    August 8, 2013 at 1:15 pm

    Oh I shall do this with my boys – they will be very impressed I think. But need a time when youngest isn’t about I think. Thank you for sharing, not only the idea, but the science behind it.

    Reply

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