Colour Changing Milk Experiment

We’ve nearly recreated The Starry Night with this colour changing milk experiment, what will your kids recreate? This is a fun and easy  experiment for children to understand how micelles work while turning their experiments into art pieces!

You will need:color changing milk equipment

  • Milk
  • Food colouring
  • Washing up liquid
  • A cotton bud or a toothpick
  • A container such as a small plate
  • A pipette

Method:

  • Pour a fine layer of milk into your container.
  • With the pipette, add some drops of different food colouring to the milk. Why not play around and create shapes?
  • Take your toothpick and add some washing up liquid to one of its ends.
  • Dip the end of the toothpick in the milk where the food colourings are. See how the colors are spreading out. You can now create some beautiful art in a Van Gogh style thanks to this colour changing milk experiment!

The science bit:

  • The washing up liquid is fat repelling, that’s why it’s a detergent and that’s how it cleans up grease.
  • Milk is made of fat, so that when you dip some washing up liquid into the milk, it will repel the fat in the milk and make it move away.
  • Since the food colouring is on the surface of the milk, it’s moving along with the milk away from the washing up liquid.