Experiments

Oil Spill! Clean It Up!

What You Need:

• Large plastic cup
• Sand
• 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
• “Tools” (spoons, paper towel, sponges, etc.)

Instructions:

When oil tankers accidentally spill their cargo of oil into the ocean, they cause a huge environmental danger. Oil is extremely hard to remove from the water and the beaches, and the environment is damaged. In this experiment, you can see how hard it is to remove oil from sand.
(This experiment can be messy, so you might want to do it outdoors.)

1. Fill a plastic cup with sand and oil and mix it well.
2. Pick some “tools” to work with. You could use a spoon, a straw, paper towel, an old toothbrush, a sponge–anything! You could also try to use soap and water to get the oil off the sand.
3. Use your tools to try and clean the oil off of the sand.

Use any idea that comes to your head and help save the environment!

Color a Flower

What You Need:

• White flowers
• Vase of water
• Food coloring

Instructions:

1. Put a white carnation or daisy in a vase with 1/2 cup of water.
2. Mix 10 or more drops of food coloring into the water.
3. Leave the flower overnight, and you’ll see the petals change colors. If you leave the flower in the colored water longer, more color will fill the petals.

The food coloring travels up through the stem by capillary action and leaks into the flower’s petals. If you look closely at the petals you can see the path that the food color and water travel.
I guess that proves the saying “You are what you eat!”

Make a Leaf Collection

What You Need:

• A collection of leaves from outside
• White paper
• Stack of heavy books
• Heavy paper
• Glue

Instructions:

1. Collect many types of leaves. The Fall season is perfect for the most beautiful colors of leaves.
2. Lay the leaves between sheets of paper.
3. Lay a heavy stack of books on the paper and press for one week.
4. Glue the leaves onto sheets of heavy paper for a wonderful collection of leaves that will last a very long time!

If you want, you can do some research and try to identify what kind of tree they came from.