Saturday, March 12, 2011

Worth Staying Up For

It was 9:45 p.m. and my son was still not ready for bed.  "It will just take a minute Mom", he pleaded. I couldn't wait until my own head hit the pillow, but for some reason I could not keep up my resistance.  I got out a paper plate, the milk, and green food coloring.  He grabbed the soap bottle.  He told me I had to pour the milk onto the plate.  He dripped a couple drops of green into the center.  "Be ready Mom, this is the cool part."  He instructed me to drip some soap right into the center of the green spot.  I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I figured the result would be slightly underwhelming.  Instead my exhausted eyes feasted on a color explosion as soon as the soap broke the surface of the milk.  Instantly there were streaks of green everywhere.  The experiment was officially over and I could have said "Up to bed", but I didn't.  For about 10 minutes, we gently blew on the it to create a green swirling effect. It was mesmerizing.  Finally, all the milk was green.  We tried to put in another drop of food coloring and soap.  While it did make a darker swirl, the explosion did not repeat.  He explained to me, that the soap pushed away the fat molecules and this is what made the green travel through the milk.
I was so happy I had given in.  What a treat it was that my budding scientist wanted to share with me his wonder of the world.

Kathy  

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