Magic Milk Experiment

[daycaremum]

Does anyone know the science behind this so I can explain it to my school age children?

[Inspired by Reggio]

I kept it simple for the preschoolers with just the soap added to the mix makes the milk feel relaxed with less tension and allows the food coloring to dance around through it bouncing into each other and the relaxing soap ... but the more complex language and descriptions as to why for older kids ....

http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemis.../magicmilk.htm

Milk consists of a lot of different types of molecules, including fat, protein, sugars, vitamins, and minerals. If you had just touched a clean cotton swab to the milk (try it!), not much would have happened. The cotton is absorbent, so you would have created a current in the milk, but you wouldn't have seen anything especially dramatic happen.

When you introduce detergent to the milk, several things happen at once. The detergent lowers the surface tension of the liquid so that the food coloring is free to flow throughout the milk. The detergent reacts with the protein in the milk, altering the shape of those molecules and setting them in motion. The reaction between the detergent and the fat forms micelles, which is how detergent helps to lift grease off of dirty dishes. As the micelles form, the pigments in the food coloring get pushed around. Eventually equilibrium is reached, but the swirling of the colors continues for quite a while before stopping.