Science Activity- Milk and Dish Detergent

 I had seen this activity on Pinterest a few times and decided I wanted to try it out. Lets just say it did not go like I had thought it would, but it was still pretty neat. 

Milk and Dish Detergent!

Materials:

Milk (whole milk worked the best)

food coloring

dish detergent (we used Dawn)

Q-tips

plates/bowls

Pour enough milk to cover the bottom of the plate or bowl. Add a few drops of food coloring (I only had the gel kind which might be part of the reason why the reaction did not go like it does on the website). Then dip the Q-tip in the dish detergent and then place it in the milk where the food coloring is. The reaction is suppose to make the colors spread away from the Q-tip and then if you have different colors in the milk they can mix together. Ours did not do that. We originally tried with 2% milk, and then we decided to use whole milk to see if that made a difference. Still no color spreading. Then we decided to just pour some detergent in with the milk to see what would happen. 

One of the students bowls

This was pretty neat since the milk and detergent do not mix together. You can move the detergent all around in the milk, which the students really enjoyed. At least the colors from the food coloring helped to make the dish detergent really stand out. 

Moving the detergent all around in the milk. 

The aftermath

The students want to try it again to see if we can get the colors to spread. We might try it again in a few weeks, and maybe use watercolor paint in the milk to see if that works or if I can find the liquid food coloring. 

Has anyone else tried this activity before? What happened when you did it?