Melting Rainbows

Last night we made colorful ice for today's rainbows (food coloring and water).....

We dropped our colorful ice into canola oil...............

We watched the ice float in the oil................



Then we patiently watched to see what the ice would do as it melted...............



Ahhhh melting rainbows.............................

We also decided to do some rainbow painting with the ice..........

Another fun rainbow day!!!!!!! Also, head over to see Peggy at Skip the Chips. She will direct you to an incredible rainbowy cake!

Oil tip- after the water settles at the bottom of the glasses, slowly dump the oil back into the original container for future science activities.

Rainbow Crystals of Glass and Polymers

Today we made rainbows using polymer crystals and glass crystals. Here is the glass crystal....

And here is our really cool solar powered crystal that makes moving rainbows all over the room in the mornings....

Then we moved on to polymer crystal rainbows. These are the polymers we used from Steve Spangler Science.....

We had two colors, red and yellow. The polymers started out looking like this.......

And this...........

Then we added some water and food coloring to get a polymer crystal rainbow!

Here they are up close.......

The more water we added the bigger the polymers got and the more the colors spread.

We learned a lot about polymer crystals, the colors in rainbows and these words......

Such a fun rainbow day!

Bright Rainbow Window Hangs

You need dyed wagon wheel pasta in colors of the rainbow, glue, wax paper, marker, paper, and yarn. ( I dyed the pasta with food coloring and a little rubbing alcohol, let pasta sit in the mixture for about an hour, then rinse and let dry overnight.)

Draw a rainbow on a half sheet of paper. The rainbow doesn't need to be perfect, only the outside line is the guide to placing the noodles.

Place a piece of wax paper over the drawing.

Flood the rainbow with a lot of glue (the glue is put on the wax paper).

Starting with the outside line, place the red noodles. Make sure the noodles touch each other and they are in the glue.

Finish the red, then move on to the next color, then the next. Try to get the noodles touching on all sides.

Done!

Let dry overnight. Cut the wax paper around the rainbow and discard. Don't try to peel the wax paper off the back, I have done this and experienced bad results! Poke two holes on the top, between the red and orange lines, string yarn through and you're good to go!


***Little note....prior to this project the ladies had fun making rainbows without the glue. I would walk into the kitchen and find rainbows all over the counter! :)