You will need:
- A square sheet of chromatography paper. You can buy blotting paper from Amazon which works just as well.
- Scissors
- Pens
- Water
- Pipette/straw
Method:
- Fold the square sheet diagonally two to four times.
- Cut different shapes on the edges of the final triangle to make it into a snowflake. Why not make this science experiment more interesting by doing a few different snowflakes with different patterns?
- Unfold your snowflake and draw some (Christmas) patterns on it, using preferably darker colours. Darker colours work best because they have more light colours hidden inside of them. Try using lots of different shades of black and brown to see which work best!
- Fill up your pipette and spread some water over your drawings. If you don’t have a pipette, you can use a straw instead, Put the straw into the cup of water, hold your finger over the top end of the straw (covering the hole) and take the straw out of the water. Just like a pipette, the straw will suck up the water and when you remove your finger, the water will come out of the end of the straw.
The science bit:
When dark coloured pens are made, they are a mix of different lighter colours. When you spread water on the pen’s ink, the lighter colours move further away from the darkest ones, revealing themselves on the paper. See here black turns out to be made of blue and pink! Give this Christmas science experiment a go a see what results you get.
