Spooky Science

Oh, Halloween.  Such an exciting time of year.  The excitement makes teaching school FUN...and hard.  So, my wonderful team and I decided to have a "special" day on October 31st.  We each did a 30-minute activity for our four periods, so I decided to do something "spooky".  The goal of mine, however, was not to spend over $12 (pretty lofty for a science teacher).  I decided to use the "milk/food dye/soap experiment" and call is (drum roll, please) "Swirling Potions."  Here is the lab sheet I used: 

Swirling Potions

Name ______________________________________

Purpose: To see what happens when you add dish soap to your potion (milk and food coloring.)

Hypothesis:  If I add food coloring to milk and dip a Q-tip of dish soap into the potion, then __________________________________.

Procedure: 

1. Pour milk into a tray, so that it covers the tray. 
2. Add a drop of whichever colors of food dye you want to add.
3. Dip a Q-tip into the dish soap.
4. Lightly touch the q-tip of soap to the milk.
5. Repeat at least three times.

Data:  

Trial 1:

Trial 2:

Trial 3:

Conclusion:

Why does this happen?

Here are some of the results.  This is awesome, even for little kids! 

This works this way, because water has SURFACE TENSION, milk is mostly water, so touching it with soap breaks the surface tension.  Awesome!