Exploding Milk

The past couple of weeks we have been enjoying experimenting with Milk with experiments like Plastic Milk and Crashing Colors. We wanted to take the crashing colors experiment a little bit further and that is just what we did with this experiment, exploding milk!

What you will need:

Milk

Food Coloring

Dish Soap

Baking Soda

Vinegar

Bowl

Spoon

What to do:

First, pour in a layer of milk.
Next, drop some liquid food coloring into the bowl.
Next, just like the crashing colors experiment add a little bit of dish soap.
Did you see that reaction? Next, pour in some food coloring.
Once you have the food coloring in, pour in the white vinegar!

How does this work?

Just like water, milk is made of molecules, tiny pieces that stick together. They stick so closely that when you put in the food coloring, the food coloring (for the most part) just sits on top of the milk. Scientist call this surface tension, the molecules stick together as if there is an invisible skin across the top of the milk. When you add detergent to the milk, it pulls the milk molecules apart so that the surface tension is weakened. The milk and detergent molecules move around, and so does the food coloring!

Now when you mix substances like vinegar and baking soda, you cause a chemical reaction. The chemical reaction changes the original ingredients in some way. In this case, vinegar and baking soda “react” to each other and produce carbon dioxide. Although carbon dioxide is an individual gas, we can “spot” it in two stages of this experiment; First, when the baking soda is dumped into the vinegar, carbon dioxide is produced and it makes the vinegar bubble. Second, the carbon dioxide rises through the vinegar into the air.