Colors and Chemical Bonds

• Provide each student with a lipped plastic plate filled with enough milk to cover the bottom. Distribute bottles of food coloring to the group and instruct the students to place a drop of red, a drop of blue, a drop of green and a drop of yellow in the center of the plate, making a diamond shape. The droplets should be close together, but not touching, with an open area of untouched milk in the center of them.
  
  

Swirling Colors

• Instruct the students to touch the end of a Q-tip into the center of the milk, not touching the colors. Hold the Q-tip there for 15 seconds. Remove the Q-tip from the milk. The milk and colors should appear unchanged. Have the students then apply a drop of dish washing soap to the end of the Q-tip and then retouch the Q-tip to the center of the milk, between all the colored dots. The colors will then become a swirling mix and blend of colors. The soap, as explained on the Steve Spangler Science website, causes the chemical bonds in the proteins in the milk to become weakened, creating the movement that results in the swirling of the colors.
  
  

Egg Antics

• Have students experiment with the strength and durability of an egg as well as the impact of evenly distributed pressure. Place a raw egg in a zip lock bag for each of the students. Instruct the students, as advised on the Steve Spangler Science website, to hold the egg in the palm of their hands and curl their fist around it, gripping the egg evenly on all sides. The egg shell will remain intact.
  
  

Cracking the Egg

• Have the students then hold the egg at the top and bottom of the shell and apply pressure to both sides. The egg will remain unbroken. Finally, have the students press down on only one side of the egg and watch as it shatters. Explain that when pressure was distributed evenly the egg shell was extremely strong, but when pressure was applied unevenly to the egg, it broke instantaneously.