All seeing eye

This eye sees everything!

Safe­ty pre­cau­tions

Warn­ing! Only un­der adult su­per­vi­sion.

Equip­ment

  • opaque white plate;
  • trans­par­ent plate with a hole in the cen­ter;
  • sy­ringe with glyc­erol;
  • jar with a spout filled with tint­ed wa­ter;
  • ad­he­sive pads.

Step-by-step in­struc­tions

Glue a trans­par­ent plate with a hole in the cen­ter to an un­der­lay. Use a sy­ringe to squeeze glyc­erol through the hole, then add some tint­ed wa­ter from a jar with a spout. This cre­ates an eye that sees ev­ery­thing!

Process de­scrip­tion

The pic­ture is the re­sult of the in­ter­ac­tion of two liq­uids with dif­fer­ent vis­cosi­ties. When glyc­erol is fed into the hole, it spreads out in a cir­cle – it re­ceives vir­tu­al­ly no air re­sis­tance. The col­ored liq­uid con­sists of small­er mol­e­cules, which, un­der the pres­sure cre­at­ed by press­ing on the jar of col­ored liq­uid, try to push the glyc­erol mol­e­cules apart. At first, they push them apart even­ly, but as soon as a gap forms in the rows of glyc­erol mol­e­cules, mol­e­cules of col­ored liq­uid rush there, push­ing each oth­er fur­ther and fur­ther, forc­ing their way in like an axe chop­ping a log.

Find even more ex­cit­ing ex­per­i­ments in the MEL Sci­ence sub­scrip­tion!

Try it