St. Patrick’s Day Science Experiment

If you are looking to do something fun in preparation for St. Patrick’s Day with your children, here is an easy, inexpensive experiment.

Here is what you need:

• fresh, white carnations
• a vase
• scissors
• green food colouring

Because carnations can last around two weeks, they are the ideal flower to work with for this experiment. Another great bonus is that that they are one of the least expensive flowers, so they are great to play with.

Since St. Patrick’s Day is a week or so away, we got a head start on this activity to let the colour really seep into the flowers. But according to all the research I found, letting the flowers sit in the food colouring for 24 hours will allow all the dye to get absorbed.

Cut the carnations on an angle, and then slice each stem a little less than halfway up the flower. This will allow the water and dye to reach the petals faster. After that’s done, place the flowers into the vase with water and food colouring. You are in charge of how much food dye you want to use. It’s fun to see the kids prepare and decide how much of the colour they want for the flowers.

 That’s it! Check every few hours on the flowers to see if the petals are absorbing the colour. Our pictures are after about 6 hours.

If you are really adventurous, you can try a rainbow of colours, but we decided to stick to the classic green carnations for St. Patrick’s Day. I hope you have fun with this experiment and if you do, let me know in a comment below on how it went!