8/12/2019 Green dyed flower experiment

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THE SCIENCE LAB

Make & Do Activity Kit

500 Harris St UltimoPO Box K346 Haymarket NSW 1238

Australia

Tel: 02 6217 0111http://play.powerhousemuseum.com

This work is licensed under the CreativeCommons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Dyed green flowersIn this colourful experiment we use the priciples of transpiration and capillary action to create greendyed owers. A wonderful experiment for St. PatricksDay!

Time: Approx.1 hour preparation

Difculty:Hints: Use a strong, thick stemmed ower for thesplit stem part of this experiment. The longer you leave

your owers the darker the colour will go.

Always keep the owersin water before theexperiment. This helps keepthe water owing in thestem. Fill 2 jars half full withwater.

1.

Add about 20-30 drops ofgreen food colouring to oneof the jars. The other shouldcontain just plain water.

2.

Adult step only: Choose astrong and thick stemmedower. Cut a spilt straightdown the middle of thestem up to the base of theower.

3.

Place one half of the steminto the green water andthe other half into the clearwater.

4.

Place all the rest of theowers into jars with thedyed green water. Leave allthe owers in a sunny spotto encourage transpiration.

5.

Check your ower forresults in the next fewdays. Observe what hashappened to the split owercompared to the owers leftwhole.

6.

3-5 clear glass jars/vases

white owers

a knife green food colouring water

What you will need:

500 Harris st. UltimoPO Box K346 Haymarket NSW 1238Australia Tel: 02 9217 0111http://play.powerhousemuseum.com

Creative Commons Licence for use of this workThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Australia Licence (CC BY-NC 3.0 AU)http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/au/

Note - We used white lisianthus, orchids andgerberas but you can also use roses, daisies,daffodils, tulips and carnations too. We found thatorchids worked very well and gerberas workedquite well. The lisianthus didnt seem to pick up thedye very easily.

8/12/2019 Green dyed flower experiment

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500 Harris St UltimoPO Box K346 Haymarket NSW 1238

Australia

Tel: 02 6217 0111http://play.powerhousemuseum.com

This work is licensed under the CreativeCommons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

THE SCIENCE LAB

Make & Do Activity Kit

Dyed green flowers

Look very carefully and you will see the path the dyehas taken.

What is Saint Patricks Day?

Saint Patrick was born in Roman Britain in the 4thCentury. He went to Ireland to convert the paganpeople there to Christianity. He used the three-leaved shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity to Irishpagans. The colour green is his special colour andso St. Patricks Day is celebrated with feasting andwearing green. It is also a festival to celebrateall things Irish and children try to hunt for theLeprechaun, a naughty Irish fairy, and his preciouspot of gold.

What else can i do?

Create a rainbow of owers

Place white owers into different coloured dyes.Which colour will be soaked up rst? How long will ittake? Do some colours show up better than others?

Look even closer

Cut through the stem and petals and look at itunder a microscope.

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Whats going on?

Most plants take their waterfrom the earth through theirroots. The water then travels upthrough the stem and into the leaves and owers.Cut owers have no roots but the stem will stilldraw up water to feed the leaves and ower for atime.

The ower you split in half has drawn up both clearand dyed water through its stem. The dyed half ofthe ower has received its nutrients from the halfstem that was in the dye.

Transpiration

Transpiration is process by which water isevaporated from the petals and leaves of a plant.When the water is transpired from a plant thewater in the stem is then pulled up behind it. Youcan see this happening when you suck water froma glass up into a drinking straw.

Capillary action

Water travels up the very small tubes in the stemand this process is called capillary action . The

coloured dye helps you to see where the water istravelling though the stem and into the ower.