Colour Changing Milk Experiment

• Full fat milk (you can change this variable - we used skim milk, but you could experiment with a variety of milks)

• Food colouring (your choice of colour)

• Liquid dish soap

• Cotton swabs

• Snowman cookie cutter (or any shape you like)

Start by pouring milk into a baking dish (we used a pie plate), you just need enough milk to cover the bottom and then some.

Then place the cookie cutter in the milk.

Next you want to fill the top of the milk with food colouring. (This is a variable you can change - use different colours and amounts and watch what happens)

Pour a bit of dish soap into a bowl. Next, touch your cotton swab tip to the dish soap to coat it. Then bring it over to your milk dish and gently touch the swab to the surface of the milk.

What happens?

The chemistry between dish soap and milk makes the magic happen! While some of the properties of soap dissolve in milk, others search for the fat of the milk.

When soap is added to milk, it breaks into the protein and the fats. The soap heads for the fats creating the cool bursting of colour.

When there is no more movement, there are no more fat molecules to be found. Try another q-tip dipped in soap!

Draw a picture of what you notice and label your picture with what you observed happening during the experiment.