Milk and Germ Science Experiment

It’s Friday, what better way to end the week with a science experiment. Well, it is British Science Week!

Today in the Discovery Room, in our technology area, we have decided to do a milk food colouring experiment on the light table. For this experiment  we gathered everything we needed-a bowl, milk, food colouring, fairy liquid and some cotton swabs.

We poured enough milk in a bowl to cover the surface with the depth of about a 1/4 inch. We then added a few drops of different food colouring in the centre of the bowl of milk quite close to each other.

Next for the fun bit ! We dipped the cotton swabs in a small amount of fairy liquid and then dipped it in the colours one at a time for around 10/15 seconds.
We were careful to move each swap onto one colour at a time, without disturbing the milk.
We were amazed to see how the colours swirled and changed in the milk especially when we placed the cotton swab on to the different colours .


Wow look at the burst of colours!

“ It’s like fireworks ”  “ It’s moving “

”It turned into a new colour” “ It has waves in it”

”The milk has changed colour “   “It looks like dynamite”

We developed our science skills by investigating the effects of adding substance together which cause a reaction.

Because we had so much fun, we decided to do a Germ Experiment.
We added a good coating of glitter into a bowl of water (if you don’t have glitter you can use pepper instead ). Whilst we did this, we discussed how the glitter represented the germs. We then dipped our fingertips into the water and watched how the glitter stuck to our finger, this showed us how germs stick to our hands if we don’t wash them with soap. The children then dipped their clean finger into soapy water before dipping it back into the bowl. The children were amazed to see how the glitter/germs spread  across the water avoiding their soapy finger.

“ Germs stuck to our finger”  “Germs don’t like soap”

We concluded that if we use soap to wash our hands, we can avoid germs. This experiment also developed our well-being skill by learning how to keep clean and healthy.

It was fun and enjoyable to create these  memorable science experiences for the children, so why not continue British science week at home over the weekend and perhaps send us some photographs of you budding scientists!

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