Magic Milk Experiment
Our previous posts were so popular on Floating Art on a plate and Bouncy Egg – thank you to all our followers. So we thought we would share another one we did called Magic Milk.
Who doesn’t like Magic!?
We normally would hate to waste perfectly good food, even for a cool experiment. But, this uses such a small amount of milk and the benefits of creating an educational lesson on this occasion, won out.
Items you will need
Plate, white one will show best results
Milk, just enough to cover bottom of plate
Your choice of at least two different food colouring (recommend 3-4)
Dishwashing liquid
Q-tips or Cotton Tips
Method / Instructions
Pour milk onto plate till bottom of plate is covered. Add at least 5 drops of 
each food colouring of your choice on the plate (but not on top of each other. Let the colours settle. Then put a droplet of dishwashing washing detergent on the Q-tip. Touch the surface on any of the food colouring and watch the reaction!
There is a video clip on our youtube site if you can’t wait and would like to see the experiment unfold.
Why it happens?
I would like to thank Nipissing University for this explanation and the Magic Milk Lesson Plan mentioned below:
The soap reduces the surface tension of the milk by dissolving the fat molecules, which is why fattier milk works better. The surface of the milk outside the soap drop has a higher surface tension, so it pulls the surface away from that spot. The food coloring moves with the surface, streaming away from the soap drop.
Lesson Material
For those of you worldschooling, homeschooling or unschooling here is a Magic Milk Lesson Plan This will provide support to your practical experiment above. It also gives some additional resources that you can follow up with ongoing study / lessons depending on the age of your kids.
Don’t forget we have a page on Educational Websites and Resources and Educational Places of Interest in Australia by State. These pages are extremely popular. We continue to add to them all the time as we are researching learning opportunities while we travel.
Happy Experimenting!
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