Rainbow rainfall

Homemade rainbow rain

Safe­ty pre­cau­tions

Per­form this ex­per­i­ment only un­der adult su­per­vi­sion.

Reagents and equip­ment

  • glass;
  • wa­ter;
  • shav­ing cream;
  • food col­or­ing, pipette.

Step-by-step in­struc­tions

Squeeze some shav­ing cream into a glass of wa­ter. Use a pipette to drip food col­or­ing over the shav­ing cream. Ob­serve as rain­bow rain be­gins to fall from the foamy “clouds”!

Process de­scrip­tion

Foam con­sists of gas bub­bles en­closed in a liq­uid or sol­id medi­um. Think of the foam in a soda glass or dish sponge. When food col­or­ing is dripped on the shav­ing cream, it par­tial­ly dis­solves in the foam. Mean­while, grav­i­ty is con­stant­ly pulling down on it, and when the food col­or­ing reach­es the wa­ter lay­er, it dis­solves to cre­ate beau­ti­ful swirling pat­terns.

You can find more cool ex­per­i­ments in the MEL Chem­istry sub­scrip­tion!

Try it