What an exciting start to a week we have had in Little Cypress! We are, along with the rest of the school, celebrating Science Week and we have been investigators and scientists by carrying out and observing science experiments in both Rainbows and Nursery.
Yesterday, we kicked the week off by doing ‘Magic Milk’ experiments. Each child had their own dish of milk and food colouring and then we watched in awe as we added a tiny drop of washing-up liquid and watched the milk ‘dance’! Click here to see this experiment. And understanding the science behind it? That’s a bit trickier, but the milk ‘dances’ and swirls when you add food colouring and washing-up liquid due to a combination of surface tension and a chemical reaction with the milk’s fats and proteins. The food colouring doesn’t actually do anything on its own; it just makes the invisible chemical activity visible to the naked eye
Today, we created our own ‘Coke and Mentos Explosion’ by adding ‘Mentos’ sweets to a bottle of Coca-Cola! We had to go outside to do this to see the volcanic eruption in all its glory! Click here to see a similar experiment to the one that we did in Little Cypress. Again, the science behind this is quite complicated but in a nutshell it is: the explosive Coke and Mentos reaction is a rapid physical reaction, not a chemical one. It is driven by the release of dissolved carbon dioxide gas from the fizzy drink, caused by the two main physical properties of the sweets: its nucleation sites and its density. We were all so excited by watching our very own explosion today!
Plenty more experiments to come this week….
Miss Chapman and the Little Cypress Scientists
