Water Transfer Experiment

Really there are so many fun science experiments out there to try and I was really looking forward to trying this one out.  Of course this one takes a little time which means my girls were a little disappointed that nothing happened instantaneously but the next morning when they woke up and saw their experiment it was worth the wait!

They both had fun setting the experiment up and we decided to use five glasses instead of the normal three because my oldest could not decide if she wanted to make orange or purple so we did both.  Because this experiment is not only a great science experiment it also shows color changing, so if you have little ones learning colors this would be great!

What is happening with this experiment? The water from the full glass moves up your paper towel into your empty glass, this process is called  Capillary Action.  The water will continue to move until each glass has an equal amount of water in them.  Then by adding the food color, the water from each glass mixes together to make the new color.

Supplies
5 glasses (could use just 3)
Water
Food Color
Papertowles

Directions

 Fill each glass half full or more with water.  Then add Blue, Red, & Yellow food color to three of the glasses

 

 Stir up the water to disperse the color.

 Rip a paper towel in half and the fold or twist it 

Put your paper towles going from the full glasses to the empty glasses (the girls ready for something to happen, must learn patients)

After time the empty glasses will fill with water transferred from the paper towels. (this was the next morning)

 My little one woke up first and the first thing we had to do was check our experiment.

 She is showing me the water in the empty glass, and I pointed out to her it was a different color.

My oldest just thought it was the coolest thing that the water filled the empty glasses but it was much cooler because we made new colors purple & orange