Rainbow Water Experiment

Today we completed our ‘Unsinkable’ topic by completing another investigation.

Firstly, we filled 4 plastic cups with 100ml of warm water.

Next, we added either 6, 4, 2 or 0 spoonfuls of sugar to the cups.

We stirred the water until the sugar had completely dissolved and added food colour to each cup.

Using a syringe we took 20mls from each of the different coloured cups (starting with the cup with the most sugar) and finishing with the cup with 0 sugar) and added these to a different glass.

This created a rainbow water effect in the glass.

After a discussion we discovered that sugar particles filled the gaps between the water particles. The glass with 6 tbsp of water contained the most particles and therefore was the most dense and sank to the bottom. The glass with 0 tbsp of water was the least dense and floated on top.