Late Night Science

Last night, at about 11:30, my older two were still up playing video games with a friend, who's been staying with us. I  was on facebook and read a post about a science experiment a teacher friend had done with her class. It looked really cool so my daughter and I tried it.

We poured a little bit of milk onto a plate and then added one drop of each color of food coloring near the middle of the plate.

  Next, we put a drop of dish soap on the end of a cotton swab and dipped it into the milk.

 Then, watched, as the food coloring appeared to race away from the cotton swab! Super cool!  We played with it a few more times and invited my son and our friend to watch as the colors spun and glided through the milk away from the dish soap.

 

  (Find out why here)

After it had mixed a bit, my daughter noticed that if she quickly dipped the cotton swab in and out, little balls would pop up and roll across the surface of the milk. Very cool and fascinating, but we have no idea why. We wondered if they were air bubbles, trapped with soap molecules, looking for fat molecules. Whatever it was, it was amazing watching the perfect little green spheres race across the top and then disappear back into the milk.  

Eventually our experimenting led to playing with oil, water, food coloring and dish soap.

 Our house-guest told the kids that they should ask their teacher if they could try this at school. They told him they didn't go to school and he seemed surprised. "Really?" he asked, and my son replied "Yeah, this IS school" We don't usually call it school, but this is our life.

Science. 

For fun. 

At 11:30 at night.

 

Since it's the time of year for packages, I found myself with an abundance of packaging peanuts. My daughter asked if she could play with the "snow" and I said yes. She threw it around in the living room for awhile and even made a "snow" angel. Then they decided to take it out in the trampoline.