Rainbow Garden!

EQUIPMENTS:

1. Some small plastic bottles or cups or pots (Seven would be best)
2. Some water
3. Different food colorings or inks (It would be best if you can manage all the seven colors of a rainbow)
4. Scissors
5. Some white flowers

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. At first, partially fill up the plastic bottles or cups with water
2. Then add different food coloring or ink to each bottle or cup.
3. Now cut the stem of each flower in a way that it’s a little longer than the height of the bottles or cups.
4. After that place a white flower in each bottle or cup.
5. Now wait for about 24 hours and observe what happens.
6. After 24 hours, exchange the flowers cups. For example – put the flower which was in the green water cup into another cup with yellow colored water.
7. Now observe or record how the flowers change.

RESULTS:

1. After 24 hours the flowers should take the color of each of their cup water and you should have a rainbow garden!
2. After exchanging the flowers, they change their colors according to the color of their cup water.

 

Rainbow Garden

EXPLANATIONS:

We humans have veins and arteries to transport fluids (blood) and nutrients. Plants also have a similar transport system. Cells called xylem and phloem carry food and water through the plant. The xylem is used to transport water and minerals and the phloem is a specialized tube to transport food.

When a plant loses water from stoma (Plural stomata) in the leaves it has to recover the water somehow. To do that, the plant sucks water up from its roots through its xylem cells. Small particles such as food coloring or ink can be sucked up along with the water through the plant body. That’s why the white flowers take on the color when they are placed in a colored water. When the cells of the flower is filled with water, they take up the food coloring or ink as well.

MORE EXPLANATIONS:

Transpiration is the process in which plants loses water. It’s a continuous process. The water inside a plant is always being cycled. That’s why a white flower dyed with food coloring or ink can be changed when placed in water with another color. As long as the white flower is alive and healthy, the color of the white flower can be changed into any color.

MORE EXPERIMENTS FOR YOU:

1. Put a colored white flower into clear water and see what happens.
2. Set up about three plastic bottles or cups with three different colors such as red, green and blue. Place a white flower in the first cup. Move it to another cup in three hours. Move it again after three hours. What happens to the petals of the flower?
3. Use naturally colorful flower in this experiment to see what happens.