Using food colouring is a great way of making chemical reactions more visible and colourful. This activity creates the exciting effect creating fireworks in milk!
Step 1: Take your clean white plate and pour a little milk into it so the whole plate is covered with milk without any spilling out.
Step 2: Take your food colouring and put a few big droplets of different colours in the centre of the plate in the milk. Putting different colour droplets on top of each other also works well!
Step 3: Take a cotton bud and dip one end of it in some washing up liquid. Take it to your plate and bring it straight down in the middle of the food colouring. Keep it there and watch the fireworks of colours that it creates in the milk! Move the earbud around and see more fireworks erupt. As the washing up liquid breaks down the fat in the milk it sends the different food colourings in spirals outwards! Step. 4:
Now try blowing into the firework patterns with a straw. How does it change the patterns?
