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They say April showers bring May flowers – let’s see what a colorful rainstorm could bring! In this week’s Saturday Science, courtesy of Juggling with Kids, bring a rainshower indoors.
Materials:
- Drinking glass or vase
- Food coloring
- Water
- Shaving cream
Process:
- Fill drinking glass or vase with water.
- Create clouds by covering the top of the water with shaving cream.
- Squirt food coloring on the shaving cream, concentrating each color in just a couple areas.
- Look at the water in your vase. It’s starting to rain!
Summary:
Why does it rain? When the water droplets and water crystals that make up clouds become heavy enough, gravity pulls them down from the sky.
This is similar to what happened in your colorful rainstorm. The shaving cream floats on top of the water because it’s made up of so much air that it is less dense. It also happens to be hydrophobic, which means that it repels water. Because food coloring is more dense than the shaving cream, the drops of food coloring easily fall through into the water, like rain drops falling from clouds.
Want more Saturday Science? See all of our at-home activities on the blog or on Pinterest.
