Steve Spangler’s Science Website offers a ton of wonderful science experiments for kids. One of my favorite experiments that Steve Spangler does is Color Changing Milk! Blogs like A Bit of This and A Bit of That and SMMART Ideas talk about this fun and popular experiment, too! Here is what you do:
Materials:
- 2% or Whole Milk
- A dinner plate
- Red, yellow, green, and blue food coloring
- Dish washing soap (Steve Spangler recommends using Dawn)
- Q-Tips
Directions:
- Pour milk in the dinner plate (enough to fill the whole plate and completely cover the bottom).
- Add one drop of each color of food coloring in the milk. Try to keep the drops close together, but not so close that they are already mixing with one another.
- Take a clean Q-tip and dab the end of it into some dish washing soap.
- Place the end of the soap-covered Q-tip into the middle of the milk. Hold the Q-tip there for about 10 seconds. All of a sudden, the colors in the milk will quickly begin to swirl together!
- You can reapply Q-tips with dish soap and try this as much as you want in your colorful milk mixture!
So how does this simple, but fun experiment work? Milk contains protein and tiny amounts of fat in it. Both fat and proteins are very sensitive to chemical changes. The chemicals in the dish soap weaken the chemical bonds that hold the protein together in the milk solution. The food coloring allows us to visibly see the changes in the protein molecules. Also, the soap molecules cause the fat in the milk to mix and swirl until the fat has been distributed across the entire amount of milk.
I love Milk
This is one of my favorite experiments too. Thanks again for featuring one of Steve’s experiments. Another one of my favorite color experiments is tie dying t-shirts with Sharpie pens and rubbing alcohol. My girls have several tie dyed t-shirts from doing this activity over and over again. http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/experiment/00000032
awsome
i saw this experiment on youtube and i was dying to get the directions on this for my science fair project!!
oh realy
I love this project but, where can I find research about how the milk changes and about everything else.
Hi Natasha! I love this project, too! Notice that the experiment says to use “2% or whole milk”. That’s because you want to work with a liquid that has FAT in it! You may already know that oil (which is a kind of fat) and water don’t mix. When you drop the food coloring into the milk, they stay separate because the fatty milk and the watery food coloring don’t mix together. Dishwashing soap “busts up” the fat molecules, allowing them to more easily swirl and mix with the food coloring, making those pretty patterns you see. A really cool follow up to this experiment would be to see what happens if you use fat-free milk! Thanks! – Christina
Umm hello(: I would like to know the purpose of this experiment. Im doing this as my science fair project and my partners and i have to make a board and bring it in to school. we need to know the purpose of this project. Its almost due, so please respond quickly. thanks!
cool i saw this on youtube im doing it for my science fair its the best
coool
“This project is the best one ever!”
Hi i am from australia and I love this experiment also i have to do a report so i chose this one. Thanks so much YOU ROCK
Hi, friend from Australia! Glad that we could point you to this experiment!
Your projects are so cool i do not know how you maid it but its so neat i done it last year in 7th grade 4 science fair project!
Im doing this project too.
this is awsome
date: mon, jan, 25th 2010
i love this experiment and im doin it for the science fair march 8th
cool cannot wait
my science fair is in two weeks
heheh im using it for my sciece fair