Dying Queen Anne's Lace is one of those experiments that I remember doing (or at least talking about) as a kid and so we decided to try it when my nieces were here to visit. There is a ton of this flower growing wild around so may as well give it a try...We did four different containers - yellow, green, red and purple food coloring. The purple food coloring was a combination of the other three colors! The yellow and green have a pretty good color after many days. The purple ones just look sick and red didn't really do much at all.
Evaluation of the science experiment - moderately successful for an adult. Mildly successful for young kids because it took WAY too long for the minimal effect for them. With older kids who can "observe" every 8 hours , it would be more interestingIf you have ever thought about doing this, go for it, but make sure that your expectations are appropriate. Dying the water was the coolest thing for our troupe (which was my boys, my nieces and the neighbors.) That part of course made me the craziest - one of the girls had red food coloring from head to toe somehow.
For those of you who may have never heard of this practice - Queen Anne's Lace is a white wild flower that will draw up food coloring through the stem from the water that it is sitting in and change the color of the flower. A cheap little experiment that demonstrates how water gets to the top of a plant and why you don't water a plant on the top but at the base instead! (Hey, God waters from the top, He can get away with though.)
Our next science experiment (not from any set curriculum as you can see) is observing the turtle that is living in one of the flower beds. We have seen him multiple days and yesterday he was seen buried under some mulch and out and about snacking on a couple of my flowers :(
1 comment:
I remember doing this as a kid. That was a great idea.
Keep us up to date on the turtle (and the flowers he is eating)!!
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