Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Unexplained Colored Flower Experiment

Last week I posted the setup of my 11 year old's white carnation science experiment.  She had looked up the procedure for an experiment to turn white carnations into colored carnations by putting their stems in water colored by food coloring.  We started with the following:

White carnations placed in colored water.
After a few days we were supposed to see the color of the white petals changing to the color of the water.  However, that did not happen.  After seven days in colored water, here were her results: 

Still white carnations.
The carnations were still just as white as the day we started with no hint of coloring in the petals.  Hmmm.  To be honest, I'm not really sure why this didn't work.  I did an experiment similar to this several years ago when my kids were younger and I remember it working.  Maybe we didn't put in enough food coloring?  I really don't know.  But that's science!  Sometimes our results are unexpected which leads to more experiments to answer these questions.  Experiments that do not go as expected are not failures.  They are an opportunity to learn!


No comments:

Post a Comment