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Rainbow in a Jar...or rather Rainbow in a Test tube!


ACES Activity of the week: Rainbow in a jar activity turned out to be an engaging way to teach Mass, Density and Volume. After defining and explaining what each term means and how they are related, each participant was asked to predict the order of density from highest to lowest for these liquids - Water, Rubbing alcohol, Honey, Corn Syrup, Oil & Dish washing liquid.

Each participant was given a test tube, a dropper and the liquids and asked to layer the liquids in order of their densities in the test tube. Food coloring was provided to make the activity more fun and colorful!

The highlight of the activity was witnessing the oil displacing the colored water and floating to the top of the water in the test tubes of the kids who got the order of oil and water wrong!

One interesting question that was raised was that how can oil be less dense than water when it is more thicker than water. This led to an engaging discussion about viscosity and density. We reviewed the definitions and looked up youtube videos to better understand the difference between viscosity and density!

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