Science Experiment: Walking Water

I asked Melanie "Do you think water can walk?" Without hesitation, she tells me yes! Smart girl. Of course, she probably was saying yes because we talk about leaving the water "running" all the time. We decided to do a science experiment to see if water could walk from one cup to another... down "stairs" (and since I don't actually have stairs in my house, we settled for books).

What you need to pull this off is two cups, one full of water, one completely empty, and a paper towel. I colored my water to make it a little easier to see.

At first, the girls just wanted to sit and watch the water "walk", but I had to explain to them that it happens really slow. We decided to paint while we waited.
It was really fun to have the girls sitting their painting while the experiment was going on. Every once in a while, Melanie would look up and say "WOW! Mom! Look! It's almost all gone" And usually "take a picture!!!" (if you have any idea how many pictures I now have of two cups of water, you'd laugh... no seriously!) Noelle would get excited and shout "water" as well. They love their experiments!

At this point, Melanie tells me that it looks like a slide! I told her it was kind of like a slide. Like when she goes on a slide, she has to go up the stairs... the water does this through capillary action. Then she goes down the slide. This is gravity.

This revelation lead to lots of fun with the slide in the living room.

She was so funny. She would go up the stairs saying "I'm doing capillary action". And then go down the slide saying "and GRAVITY!"

There you have it, water does walk, thanks to capillary action. In the case that you are wondering, the cup that started out with the water in it was empty save a few drops when I cleaned everything up. It took about 2 hours in total.