Create Your Own Tie-Dye Paper
If you are a creative person, you can probably come up with many different ways to use this fun tie-dye paper project. In my classroom we use the tye-dye notecards to create name cards for the front of our science journals. Get creative and do something fun with it. This experiment is really easy to do.
Materials
Shaving Cream
Paper plate
Food coloring
Blank paper or index cards
How does this experiment relate to science?
The reason that the swirls stick to the paper so well has to do with how the particles attract to each other. Shaving cream contains soap. Within the soap there are long ionic species that have a polar (hydrophilic) head and a non-polar (hydrophobic) tail, making it only partially polar.
On the other hand, paper contains cellulose which is polar. Food coloring is also polar. When the index card is applied to the pile of shaving cream the food coloring would rather hang out with the cellulose from the index card than the partially polar shaving cream. The result is a really cool looking piece of paper!
Higher-Level Questioning
Would this same experiment work with poster board? card board?
What other projects can you think of that this would be useful for?
If you are a creative person, you can probably come up with many different ways to use this fun tie-dye paper project. In my classroom we use the tye-dye notecards to create name cards for the front of our science journals. Get creative and do something fun with it. This experiment is really easy to do.
Materials
Shaving Cream
Paper plate
Food coloring
Blank paper or index cards
How does this experiment relate to science?
The reason that the swirls stick to the paper so well has to do with how the particles attract to each other. Shaving cream contains soap. Within the soap there are long ionic species that have a polar (hydrophilic) head and a non-polar (hydrophobic) tail, making it only partially polar.
On the other hand, paper contains cellulose which is polar. Food coloring is also polar. When the index card is applied to the pile of shaving cream the food coloring would rather hang out with the cellulose from the index card than the partially polar shaving cream. The result is a really cool looking piece of paper!
Higher-Level Questioning
Would this same experiment work with poster board? card board?
What other projects can you think of that this would be useful for?