Tie-Dyed Milk – Science in the Kitchen with Kids!

]Here is long awaited Tie-Dyed Milk experiment. As you will see and hear the girls just love this one!

Please note: ***DO NOT DRINK THE MILK***

What you need:

1. Milk
2. Glass dish/bowl/pie plate
3. Liquid soap
4. Food coloring

Directions:
Pour room temperature milk into glass dish. Gently squirt one drop of each of the food coloring in the milk. You will want to put the colors in four separate areas of the dish. Squirt in a little drop of liquid soap into milk and watch the magic unfold before your eyes!

Once the liquid soap is in the dish with the food coloring and milk it will automatically swirl. Very cool to see. Kids will LOVE this.

So what’s going on? Why does this cool effect happen?
Well, surface tension is the reason. Soap reduces the surface tension of the milk by dissolving the fat molecules that milk has. 

The surface of the milk outside the soap has a higher surface tension, the surface moves away from that spot. The food coloring moves with the surface of the milk, continually pulling away from the soap. The food coloring is drawn down into the liquid, which makes it appear again somewhere else!