Capillary Action Day 2

Ok, Day 2 of capillary action-ness was awesome! I have to say that with a big exclamation point to compensate for the failure of my carnation experiment. Which, at this point, we were still watching and waiting for evidence, doing a hopeful check every few hours with expectant graph in hand. Blah!

So...while we were waiting, I found this other idea that I loved. I got it here:
http://www.chromebattery.com/battery-kids/projects/capillary-action-experiment on a website called Battery Kids--turns out they have a lot of cool stuff, I'll definitely be checking it out some more on a day when I've got some time.

Anyway, this is what the experiment looks like when you're done.

This one really works AND you only have to wait about 2 hours as opposed to 24 or more AND you can really watch it working. AND you only need to have a paper towel and some water. How much better can an experiment get, huh?

So, first you fill up a glass with water--mostly all the way up to the top. Then you get another glass and leave it empty. Twist up a paper towel into a rope; I had the kids do this part and they worked together to get the paper towel wound up really tightly. Submerge one side of the "rope" into the glass that is full and bend the other side into the cup that is empty, creating a rainbow-ish shape of the paper towel between the two glasses. That's all you have to do. The water will soak into the paper towel and climb from one glass to the other. Over the course of a couple hours, it will fill the empty cup until the two cups have an equal amount of water in them.

I loved this experiment and the kids were way more excited about it too because they could see it happening. Sure, it's pretty slow, but it's obvious that the water is climbing up the paper towel. Even if the kids can't see it with their eyes you can have them feel the "rope" with their fingers and tell you where it's wet and where it's dry. My youngest son kept track of the water this way. They were both very interested to know why water wasn't dripping off the rope and onto the table. This question led to a great discussion about how the "rope" acted like a bridge. Necessarily, I had to delve into the concept of molecules and how they work in water. Once again, we used lots of dumbed down drawings. Pictures of big circle smiley-face water molecules holding hands and pulling each other up a rope, and big circle smiley-face water molecules going across a bridge while telling each other to hold hands tight and not let go. In this way, my kids came to understand some of the nature of water, why the table didn't get wet, and had the topic of surface tension reinforced (we've worked on it before) in their little brains.

Therefore, I'm very happy about this simple experiment. Although the flower one is a little showier, I think this paper towel one is a little more interesting.