Colour Detectives

Today we wanted to find out what was inside our felt pens. We did a science experiment called Chromatography to find out.

First Mrs Leung drew lines on the paper towels with different coloured felt pens.

We decided to test blue, brown, green, black and red felt pens.

In small groups, we made predictions (hypotheses) about what we thought would happen to each colour.

We dipped each paper towel into a bowl of water so that the felt line was wet.

 

We lay the paper towels on some newspaper to dry, while we waited to see if anything would happen.

We also tried the same experiment with coffee filters. 

Would the results be the same?

We saw that some of the colours were made up of other colours.

We noticed that the red coloured felt had not separated into other colours.

Paige told us this was because red was a primary colour and you could not mix other colours to make red.

Look at the brown coffee filter! Brown is made up of a lot of different colours!