🧪 Home School: Science - Skittle DiffusionsteemCreated with Sketch.

in Popular STEM2 days ago

Last week was half term so I had my 6 year old to look after, and one thing that he loves to do is Science Club.

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It's always an activity that I enjoy doing with him (we constructed a Solar System after doing this) and on this occasion, we performed a diffusion experiment using skittles.

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Before explaining the theory (in case you don't already know it), I'll walk you through how to create the above...

What you need

  • A packet of skittles: You won't use many of them and you can eat them at the end

  • A plate: or saucer or any dish really that you can arrange your skittles on

  • Hot water: I used a mug of hot water from the kettle that I allowed to cool

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Method

  1. Arrange the Skittles - Put them around the plate however you like - depending upon what picture / shape you want to create

  2. Gently pour the hot water - The skittles are likely to move if you pour too quickly so be ready to move them around

  3. Watch the colours go

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You'll see the swirl effect which was caused by the angle that I poured the water in.

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Why does it happen?

Diffusion. The (coloured) sugar water will move towards an area where there is less sugar (i.e. from where the skittles are towards the centre). The colours don't mix because they each have an equal amount of sugar in - so the colours flow towards the purer water.

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If you've got young children, this is a fun experiment to do and I didn't think of it at the time (we were too busy eating the remaining skittles) that you could arrange the skittles to try to create art, using pure sugar to control where the colours will run.

A fun experiment that can be continued...

Sort:  

Pretty cool! Do you also do things with Mentos and cola...? Or sugar and baking soda...? Or sugar and sulphuric acid...???

Or red phosphor, ephedrin, lithium and.. Oh wait... This isn't breaking bad^^

Sorry, couldn't hold it back :D

Rubbish head ;-))

I should "Better call Saul"... ;-))

Oh no! I must flee quick with my "El Camino" ;D

So far, we're keeping it as 'mess-free' as possible 🙂

We've done a few simple ones - colours separating on litmus paper, hot coloured water in a glass dropped into cold water (like a water volcano)... keeping things very simple.

And there's no way I'm keeping acid in the house with kids around!

Ah, it depends on age and comprehension... I've always tried to teach the correct way to deal with such things. Better that way than uncontrolled...

A lot of times. 😀

That's cool and also pretty. 😍

I was wondering: how did you resist the temptation? He would probably want to eat them all rather than let them diffuse!

Until I got here:

we were too busy eating the remaining skittles

It's important to buy a big bag 😆

I'm still amazed by how much you care.

I hope that you'll still log in to Steemit every day after this has been deployed. It wouldn't be the same around here without your bullshit.

Oh, that's a shame for you. You'll have to be content with your farming of HIVE.

No one farms on Hive lol
That platform has an efficient abuse prevention project lol

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Even Trafalgar was nuked when he tried lol
He has a free "fuck all" license to farm Steemit, obviously.

No one farms on Hive lol

Are you joking???

https://wallet.hive.blog/proposals

Circle Jerking Reward Farming at its finest.

Ah, the use of 'lol'. You are joking.

This is not a farm, dimwit.

There is a dedicated funding budget lol

https://peakd.com/proposals

It is very hard to actually get one accepted and supported.

This is not a farm, dimwit.

Yeah, it is. You're just too stupid to see it.

It is very hard to actually get one accepted and supported.

Then why are so many pointless proposals being funded?

This looks pretty! Mine, propably, would be too impatient and would steal the skittles from the plate, since he is still very young and doesn't understand what we are doing here^^

But if he grows up (and if i still remember this by then) we could do something similar, it's a nice idea ;)

And thanks for the explanation, didn't know that it works like this :)

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