Liquid Layers

Warning!
Adult supervision: choking hazards, liquids not for drinking

Please read the procedure before beginning! After reading, please watch the video. Some activities require more time and cleaning up than others. You also have the choice of performing these activities in a way that suits your needs.

Not for children under 3 years. Adult supervision is required. Follow approved procedures.

Materials

· Empty Bottle

· Funnel

· Honey

· Glycerin

· Dish Soap

· Water (Red)

· Vegetable Oil

· Puff Ball

· Eraser

· Bead

· Hardware Nut

· Rubber Band

Procedure

1. Remove the lid from the bottle. Use the funnel to SLOWLY pour the liquids into the bottle in the following order (it may help to tilt the bottle slightly so that each liquid runs down the side of the bottle rather than pouring directly into the liquid that is already in the bottle):

a. Honey

b. Glycerin

c. Dish Soap

d. Water (Red)

e. Vegetable Oil

2. What do you notice as you are pouring the liquids into the bottle? The liquids should be forming layers in the bottle—if they are poured too fast, they may mix, but they will separate over time.

3. Now, open the small bag containing all of the other materials. Remove the funnel and drop the objects in the bottle one at a time. Pay attention to which layers they sink to or sit on top of. Can you predict where each object will stop sinking?

4. Screw the cap back on the bottle and put your liquid layers on display somewhere!

Science Behind it!

Woah! You have just seen different liquids form in different layers in your bottle. There are three states of matter: solid, liquid, and gas. You are placing both solids and liquids in your container. A solid keeps its shape and a liquid flows easily and does not keep its shape. Depending on what kind of liquid or solids gets poured into the container, they can have different densities. Even gases play a role and affect the density levels.

Matter is anything that has weight and takes up space. Everything you can see and touch is made up of matter. Mass is a measurement of the amount of matter in an object. Density is a term used to tell how much space an object can take up. An object with little matter has a low density and the object with more matter has a higher density. As you put different liquids and solids in the bottle, each liquid/solid has a different density, which causes them to form layers and not mix! No matter what you do, they will always end up in this order! It is also possible for two objects to be the same size, but their densities to be very different. For example, a pound of bricks and a pound of feathers both take up the same amount of space but have different densities because it takes more feathers to make the pound. The change in volume or mass will change the density of the object.