After a week of science we needed some really simple science experiments, of the edible variety just for fun as the weekend wandered by…
Here we go Se7en + 1 Experiments: Please feel free to click on any picture that you would like to see bigger.
- Ice Salt Coloring: We made a massive ice block by filling a juice box with ice and popping it into the freezer overnight. Once it had frozen we cut the juice box open. Then we used tweezers and picked up chunky grains of salt, dipped them into food coloring and dropped them onto the ice. They took a while to get going but when they did we got lots of little icy tunnels and I can imagine with different colored ice you could get a very pretty block. If you can walk away for quite a while then when you get back you will have fairly large tunnels. Only “nobody” got busy while we weren’t nearby and so I can’t tell show you the finished tunnels – but try this it was well worth it. Basically the salt melts the ice faster than the surrounding air does… and you get this pretty tunnel effect.
- Shattered Spaghetti: Did you know that if you bend spaghetti by the end points until it snaps then it rarely snaps into two pieces. As the spaghetti breaks it causes the long noodle to bend a bit more than it was already bent, as it straightens out… this causes it to break again… and so on. We didn’t get one piece breaking in two, we did work through nearly a whole packet trying!!!
- Density Dressing: We took a whole lot of different ingredients for salad dressing and carefully placed them in a jar… they all had different densities and sunk or rose to their own levels. The vinegars sunk below the oils and the lemon juice settled in nice globules between the canola and the olive oil layers… very cool. Then we shook it all up and left it to separate out. It never totally separates out!!!
- Jelly Lenses: We use this book for school and it comes with these little plastic dishes, one straight, one concave and one convex.
Make some jelly and gently pour it into the moulds, once the jelly sets you have three little lenses! The lenses bend the light making the writing underneath them look smaller or larger depending on wether the lens was concave or convex. We could use glass bowl, and so on but these are pretty convenient. They were goo for a good afternoons play before they were eaten!!!
- Dreadful Dessert: This is one of my kids favorite science experiments – they suffer so!!! Prepare a bowl of instant dessert and give everyone a spoonful from the same spoon (some of mine won’t partake … mingling of germs and all that!!!). Once everyone has had a taste cover it and leave it in the fridge overnight. You will see the following day how the enzymes from everyones saliva “contribution” have started to disintegrate the dessert. Most (but not all) participants were mildly interested and quite keen to gulp down the remaining dessert regardless of the yucky appearance.
- Invisible Ink: Paint some writing with lemon juice onto some white paper. Pop it on top of the toaster, let an adult turn the toaster on and watch what happens. The writing turns brown as the sugars in the fruit juice start to “cook.”
- Rocking Raisins: Pop some lemonade in a glass and add a couple raisins. The bubbles carry the raisins upwards and the weight of the raisins drop and the bubbles carry the raisins up and … just some quick and easy summertime fun.
And our Se7en + 1 th experiment:
- Ice Cream in a Ziplock: We make this all summer long… not this weekend, just a bit of chaos doing all these experiments, but here’s a link. This is such fun, it works and it is very impressive.
That’s us. Edible science is done for a little while!!!
When Ordinary Life Magic Invites the world to join their Science Fair… we drop everything, albeit at the last minute, and join in!!!
If you want to join up or find a great resource with heaps of experiments then click on the button!!!
I’ve really enjoyed your science experiment week! I have a twelve year old who will love working through all of these. Thank you.
Hi R, glad you liked it, hope you have fun doing some science stuff with your guys!!! Have a good week!!!
Thanks for the fun ideas. For #7, is that regular old lemonade? It looks so clear in the picture.
Glad you enjoyed the post Tammy and we any clear soda will do, so that their are bubbles to attach to. We have a soft drink here – lemonade – that is a transparent soda with a lemon flavour… hope that helps and have a great week!!!