While looking around pinterest for info on density jars for my sister for her class i came across some links about oily fireworks! I actually think i had run across them before, but this time i actually took a better look & thought i should definitely give this a try because it might give the opportunity for some nifty photos!
So here is my how to & the results! You only need a few supplies really, a jar, a bowl, a fork or something to stir with, some water, some oil & some food colouring!
First you need to fill your jar full of water. Now you need to put some oil in a little bowl (the internet says 2Tbsp) & add a few drops of food colouring. The drops of food colouring will suspend in little spheres in the oil, its kinda cool! So you need to break them up and mix em around with the fork or spoon or whatever you have.
**These are some drops of food colouring in a little jar of oil, you can see how they are little balls!**
Then you dump the oil & everything into the jar! (I found that the food colouring likes to hang back and stay in the bowl while most of the oil pours out if you pour it super quick, so maybe use the fork or spoon to help get it all in there) And when you do this little bits of the food colouring will start to drop down into the water creating lovely little swirly effects!
It soon got pretty dark & there were just little bits of swirls at the bottom.
The next day i decided to try again! I had an idea, since i have lots of different colours of dye, i thought that maybe if i first put in just light colours, mainly yellows, oranges & red then do it again with blue type colours they might mix to make a purple-ish mix!
So i started with these colours:
& they did this:
So, then i tried the next group of colours. Oh! first i salvaged the oil! i just skimmed it off the top of the jar & got out as much as i could. I ended up getting a little bit of the water as well, but that is ok! you don't need perfect oil for this experiment! The little yellow blobs in here are the bits of water from the last try & the darker circles are the food colouring.
& i dumped this mix into the jar with the already yellowish mixture! it did this:
& then it turned into a giant dark, scary mass! & then little finger things came out the bottom of it!
I was not totally satisfied with the results i got. I didnt get the colourful swirly mix that i was hoping for. I thought that maybe the reason was because i was that in the hope for more colour i was going a little crazy with the food colouring and putting way too much in there! So i scooped off the oil again & dumped out the jar, got myself some clean water & started over again! This time i decided to go easy on the food colouring, instead of putting in several drops of different colours i limited myself to 1 drop each of ..well, i think i put a drop of each colour i had, which is 8. I also tried not mixing them up quite as much so that there were some larger blobs of colour in there with the little ones.
& this is what i got!
I was much more happy with these results! I thought they were much prettier than the other ones! It is a pretty neat experiment! Fireworks in a jar!
It doesn't last very long though, the above picture is 1min in & below is after only 3 min. It is already a gunky green mess. But you can always just scoop out the oil, get some more water & try again!
***
Another experiment...
This raining rainbows experiment, here is another link, i have seen plenty of pins for it. I had just remembered about it, not read about it & thought it was just a jar of water, some shaving cream drop some drops of food colouring on it. So.. i did that. Well! It did not work. I was waiting for the food colouring to soak through the shaving cream & waiting & waiting.. blah. So i left. Now it is days later & i left it there, the bottom of the shaving cream is starting to dissolve into the water, the food colouring has spread out along the top, but nothing is going through. Maybe this is super power dollarama shaving cream? After actually reading the instructions online i see that they say that you are supposed to use water & food colouring, so i assume that is the issue. Maybe i will give that a try & have pretty raining rainbow pictures another time!
