You don’t need a professional laboratory to carry out great experiments: even in our kitchens we can also find many ingredients for great experiments. And all we need for that are just regular products and materials that are easy to find at home. In today’s tutorial from the kitchen lab, we’re going to take a look at how to make all the colors of the rainbow from just three colors! And we will do it the way it’s done in a lab: with chemical reactions that work like magic!
Required materials:
- safety glasses (optional, if not available please use caution)
- protective gloves (e.g. disposable gloves – optional, if not available please use caution)
- protective clothes that can get dirty
- 3 teaspoons (or 1 spoon and 2 pipettes, if available)
- at least 4, better 12 small, transparent, colourless containers to be used as test tubes (e.g. shot glasses or other containers made of glass or plastic, or even ice cube trays…)
- 3 glasses with lids for the reagents and the red cabbage juice (e.g. empty jam jars)
- optional: coffee filter + additional glass (for curcuma extract)
Reagents:
- acid: citric acid solution, juice of a lemon, or vinegar essence (possibly diluted in a jam jar with a little water)
- light base: soda, baking powder or (washing) soda
- strong base: solution of about 1/4 dishwasher tab or some dishwasher powder in tap water (mix this lye in an empty jam jar or similar)
- neutral: tap water
Indicators:
- red cabbage & boiling water for red cabbage juice
- curcuma powder or curry powder, alcohol (clear, colourless, e.g. vodka), coffee filter (optional) and cold tap water to prepare the curcuma extract
- mallow blossoms (freshly collected or dried, e.g. from the pharmacy) and cold tap water
other possible indicators:
- blueberry juice (without additives! best prepared fresh)
- red beet juice (without additives! best prepared fresh)
- dark blue or red flowers (e.g. rose petals)
