Experiments: Frozen Paper and Secret Messages

Today was a good day for more experiments (It was just too hot and humid for me... yep, I'm pretty lame).

The first experiment: Frozen Paper (from the Science Arts book mentioned in my last post)

Materials:

Freezer, Heavy Paper, water, shallow pan, water, cookie sheet, watercolor paints/brushes

Procedure:

1. Dip the pater in a shallow pan of water until it's thoroughly wet (I'll admit, I just ran water in the sink...)

2.Place the wet paper on a cookie sheet.

3. Place the cookie sheet and paper in the freezer or outside to freeze (ha ha ha! I don't think that will ever work while we live in this house).

4. When frozen, remove the paper from the freezer and paint on the paper before it thaws.

"When the watercolor paint comes in contact with the FROZEN paper, it cools and nearly freezes too. This cooling slows down the movement of the paint molecules and the paint begins to freeze and behave more like a solid. If the paper begins to thaw or melt, the molecules of paint and water move faster and mix more easily, much like the usual behavior of paint and water"

So, I got some paper wet, and put them in the freezer.

Then, a few hours later, I put paint dresses on the girls and let them at it. They love this part, of course.
It didn't take long for the paper to start to thaw, but while it was frozen, the paint did seem to freeze to it. It wouldn't smear like water paints typically did.

But once it did thaw, the colors did too, and they ran all over. I think it looks neat. It looks like we dumped water on the paper after we painted it... but we didn't.

While the girls were painting their frozen paper, I decided to do another experiment. This one isn't in the book, but equally as exciting.

Second Experiment: Secret Message

Materials

White paper, white crayon, watercolor paint (I mixed a little Tempera paint with water)

Procedure:

1. Use the white crayon and write a message on the white paper

2. Give the paper to someone else to paint on and discover the hidden message

The oil in the crayon and the water in the paint will not mix, so as you paint on the paper, you are staining the paper a different color, but the message written with the crayon will stay white (that's my scientific explanation... just smile and nod)

Can you see my message?

How about now?

The girls loved finding their messages

Noelle Marie Smithson!

Melanie Abigail Smithson

I think today's experiments were a success!