Celery Experiment

My son loves to do simple science experiments.This is actually one of his favorites because of the cool colors he can use.


What You'll Need

• glass jar
• celery
• water
• food coloring

How We Did It

1. Help your lil one cut up the celery. Just cutting them in half will do.
2. Next have them add the food color to water and watch as clouds of primary colors swirled around in the clear liquid. (Though a simple action, it's a nice way to introduce the concept of density since the dye sinks to the bottom of the glass.)
3. Now it was time to soak the celery in the dye.
4. After about 20 minutes, start checking out the celery. 
5. Have your kid grab one celery stick and break it in half to see some of the color being soaked into the celery.
6. After about an hour, the dye will have made its way into the leafy green tops. If you leave the celery in the dye overnight, the leaves get almost completely saturated by color. My son was all amazed by the vibrant blue-colored leaves.

The science When you water the soil of your plants, how does the water travel from the soil into the plant and out to the leaves? Tiny tubes (xylem) draw the water up from the roots like a straw. It works by a capillary action. The water molecules suck up inside the tiny tubes and move up and out to the leaves as if someone was sucking on the end of the tubes. The suction actually occurs as a result of water in the leaves evaporating very slowly.