• Did you ever do the dancing milk experiment as a kid? The one where you fill the bottom of a pie dish with milk, drip some food coloring into it and then dab dish soap to watch the colors dance and jump around the dish? If not, you totally need to make some time to do it. Our kids love this experiment, and they frequently ask to repeat it. What’s not to like about dancing milk right? To add a fun and quirky twist to this idea, we tried glowing magic milk. The idea is the same but instead of using food coloring we chose to use watered down fluorescent paints.

    Your supply list is fairly easy.

    Fluorescent paints
    Water
    Squeeze bottles
    Milk
    Pie plates
    Dish soap
    Q-tips
    Black light

    To get your experiment going, fill your squeeze bottles with slightly watered down paints. You want them to drip and flow easily. Next fill the bottom of your pie plates with milk. Let your kids squirt paints into their milk. This is a fun task all in itself. When they have finished adding their colors it’s time to turn off the lights, and turn on your black light. Already things are looking pretty awesome. But we are just now getting to the fun part. Dip the end of your Q-tip into your dish soap and then into your milk. The paint appears to jump and hide from the soap, only to slowly reemerge.

    Why does this happen do you ask? Well it is something to do with the chemical reaction between the detergent and the proteins and fat in the milk.

    It’s just another demonstration of how science can be fun!

    Of course, if you don’t have a black light handy you can try the original experiment. Everything is the same except you use food coloring instead of fluorescent paint.