Science isn’t always about success. Sometimes in science, there are a few failures before the success. Edison is credited with saying, “I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that will not work.”
Well, when I set about trying to figure out a fun Valentine’s Day themed science experiment, I found one way that just would not work.
I had a whole week of Valentine’s Day fun planned for the blog!
Valentine’s Day printable cards – Check!
Valentine’s Day post about love – Check!
Valentine’s Day craft – Check! Check!
Valentine’s Day science experiment? Uhhh. Not so check.
I started off by thinking I was going to do that cool science activity with Little Mister where you pour warm water over Skittles and the colors dissolve into the water creating a rainbow effect. I even bought Valentine’s Day themed Skittles! We got our shallow dish, our warm water, made the Skittles into a cute heart shape and………the colors were less than impressive. You couldn’t tell the orangey-red from the red, and the white did absolutely nothing!
Needless to say, Little Mister didn’t care a bit. He was more interested in eating the spilled Skittles. We cut our losses and decided that allowing Little Mister to eat the Skittles was a better use than repeating this activity.
So I sat down and started to brainstorm new activities that we could do. I found some on Pinterest that looked interesting such as The Dancing Hearts over on Playdough to Plato, but I couldn’t get up the nerve to sacrifice my beloved Sweethearts.There was this cool Love Potion activity over on Mommy’s Bundle, but it seemed a little old for Little Mister to be trying. And as cool as this activity making your own rock candy was from Powerful Mothering, it was definitely for kiddos older than Little Mister.
Then I remembered this activity I saw over on Buggy and Buddy about making Chromatography Butterflies and thought, “Hey, why couldn’t we do that with hearts and then make a little banner from them?”
PERFECT!
A little background: Chromatography is the chemistry of separating mixtures, particularly by passing it through a solution or suspension or as a vapor. In this experiment, we use coffee filters to allow the different pigments in markers to separate! We’ll find that there are multiple colors that make up each marker color!
Materials needed:
- White coffee filters
- Non-permanent markers
- Cups of water
- String
- Hole punch or needle (to create hole for string)
- Scissors
Experiment Procedure:
- Take a coffee filter and draw a thick circle with a marker on the flat part of the coffee filter where the ridges meet the bottom. Make sure you don’t color in the center of the circle! Repeat this with as many of the markers as you would like, using a new coffee filter for each color/marker.
- Fold the coffee filter into quarters (in half twice) so that it forms a cone shape.
- For each filter, have a short cup of water. I used Post-It Notes to label what each starting color was so that we could note the changes and talk about the colors.
- Gently pull apart the cone so that the cone-shaped coffee filter will balance on the edge of the cone with the tip of the cone just in the water. Make sure that only the blank tip is in the water, not letting the marker get in the water.
- Let the filters sit in the water, allowing the colors to spread up the filter.
- Once the water has reached the outer edges of the filter, take them out of the cups and lay them flat to dry. I recommend using something underneath to protect your table. We used hand towels and I know Buggy and Buddy recommends newspaper.
- Discuss what colors came from each marker! Talk about how each pigment is composed of different colors. For older kids, this is a great time to start talking about prisms!
- Once the coffee filters are dry, you can make them into hearts!
To make them into hearts, I folded the coffee filters in half and cut them into hearts. I made the first heart and then used it as a template for the others so that they were all the same size. You may have to adjust how you fold them in half a couple of times to try to get as much of the cool colors in the heart as possible. I then punched small holes on each side and threaded string through to create a little banner. Little Mister was so excited to hang the banner from our mantle! It was a total success this time!