Twenty-one very excited Montessori students braved the rainy weather to visit the Chemistry Lab on Tuesday April 9th. They were treated to three exciting experiments on the theme of ‘Color’. First, they were taught how to perform chromatography of marker pen ink. This sounds more difficult than it is!

The children decorated discs of filter paper with marker pens and then dipped a specially cut-out tail into the water. As the water spread through the filter paper, it separated the dyes making up the marker pen ink and created a beautiful rainbow of colors.

Next, they experimented with the surface tension of milk. Milk was poured onto paper plates, and they dropped a pattern of food colours into the milk. When they touched the surface of the milk with a cotton wool bud soaked in washing-up liquid, the surface tension of the milk was lowered and the colors were ‘pushed’ out to form a white star shape in the middle. Both experiments were experiments that the children could do at home (with adult supervision).

Finally, the children all said that they were looking forward to the Saint Maur Food Fair that will be held on campus on April 29th. In particular, they were excited to buy raffle tickets to see if they could win one of the wonderful prizes. To rehearse the winning and losing effect of raffle tickets, students were treated to a Chemistry raffle. Each student chose a small bottle containing a colourless liquid. When the instructor added a few drops of the ‘magic liquid’ to the bottles, just two of them changed color to pink. The lucky winners won a special pencil to help them study.

It was still raining at the end of the visit so on such a good day for ducks, the students were encouraged to say ‘hi’ to any that they met on the way back. The students were extremely excited about their special chemistry lesson and some even commented, that they would like to come back to the Science Building every day. We look forward to seeing the Montessori students back in the Science Centre next year!