The Lemon-Spy

Make spy ink with an ordinary lemon!

##Safe­ty pre­cau­tions Warn­ing! Only un­der adult su­per­vi­sion.

Equip­ment

  • lemon juice;
  • brush;
  • can­dle;
  • lighter;
  • wa­ter­col­or pa­per.

Step-by-step in­struc­tions

Draw a se­cret pic­ture on wa­ter­col­or pa­per with lemon juice. Leave to dry for 10–15 min­utes. Then use a can­dle to care­ful­ly heat the piece of pa­per. Your draw­ing ap­pears!

Process de­scrip­tion

Lemon juice con­tains var­i­ous or­gan­ic sub­stances such as car­bo­hy­drates, or­gan­ic acids, and vi­ta­mins. They nat­u­ral­ly have rel­a­tive­ly low de­com­po­si­tion tem­per­a­tures, and there­fore, when heat­ed over a can­dle, they eas­i­ly de­com­pose into col­ored prod­ucts and thus be­come vis­i­ble.

Even more cool ex­per­i­ments await you in the MEL Chem­istry sub­scrip­tion!

Try it