Fireworks in a Jar

Are your kids bored today? Here is something super easy to do with them and you are bound to have all the needed supplies right in your pantry! SCORE!

Supplies needed:

2 small jars (We used baby food jars)

1 large jar (we used quart size jars)

oil

water

food coloring

forks

To start off the experiment what you will need to do it put about 1/4 cup of oil into each of the two small jars. Then take 3-4 different colors of food coloring and SLOWLY add drops of each color into the oil.  Eli's jar is shown below.

Ezekiels jar is shown below here. We put the drops in two fast and they kind of exploded and mixed together. This will be a negative key factor later on in the project so make sure you add them SLOWLY. 

Next take a picture of your cute kids...see Micah in the back? He was enjoying a snack. Ignore Mr. Booger-face on the left. His nose has been a fountain lately.

I made sure to keep the quart size jars away from the boys until it was time to pour in the oil. Otherwise the boys like to jump the train so to speak and don't wait for instructions. We are working big time on listening skills, especially with these fun science experiments. After you have the food coloring added to the oil take a fork and slowly stir, breaking up the food coloring into little beads. Then fill your quart size jars about 3/4 ths of the way full with warm water. 

Zeke went first. He poured the oil/food coloring mixture into his water first.

But because his food coloring was put in to fast and had spread around in the oil it caused the fireworks to not work. The food coloring just sunk right away out of the oil into the water and spread around in the water resulting in a big dark blob....they still thought it was awesome. :)

Here is Zeke's jar once the food coloring was spread. We then talked about how the water and oil were seperate and do not mix due to different densities...not that they had a clue about what I was saying. 

Next was Eli's turn to mix. He poured the oil/food coloring mix in slower than zeke and the oil stayed at the top and contained the food coloring leaving a cool speckled look to it but wait...

very slowly the food coloring starts to sink to the bottom of the oil and starts touching the water. Once it touches the water it shoots out of the oil like FIREWORKS and looks so awesome and pretty!

As the oil continues to travel from oil to water it spreads though out the rest of the water in the jar.

The boys LOVED this. I did as well. It was so pretty and fun to watch...

and we watched....

and we watched and talked...until the water was pretty much a big blob of darkness.

And because they still had their forks sitting next to them they of course had to mix up their concoctions a little more. (not that it did anything but it was still fun)

After the fireworks were over we started to talk about the oil sitting on top of the water again and they lot interest at that point. But if your looking for something fun to do with your kids on a gloomy day this is a great one to try out.