Rainbow in a glass

What you need

Water, a mug, 5 separate cups, a tablespoon, a clear glass, a pipette and skittles.

Instructions:

• Add the following numbers of skittles into their own cup 10 purple, 8 green, 6 yellow, 4 orange and 2 red
• Heat a mug of water and heat (not boiling).
• Measure a table spoon of hot water into each cup (pouring over the skittles)
• Stirring each cup (careful not to splash) and then leave to cool (somewhere safe).
• Continue to stir every 10 minutes until the skittles dissolved

Using your pipette take the coloured water from each cup into the clear glass in this order. Purple, green, yellow, orange and then red. You need to go slow so that you do not mix the layers of the water.

You should be left with a rainbow in your glass!

I'm sure your child/ children enjoyed this and want to understand how this works so here the information.

Skittles are made of sugar, adding the hot water dissolves the Skittle and the colouring remains in the water. Each cup has the same amount of water but each glass has a different number of skittles (meaning more or less sugar). As there is more sugar from the yellow skittles than the orange the yellow is more dense. So the red is the least dense and will not sink below the orange water (being lighter or less dense). This is why you should start with the most dense water (purple) so that it does not sink through other layers and mix the colour.

So something a little different but really interesting and adds in some learning!