Cabbages! Boring old cabbages right? Wrong. But everything changed for me and I hope for you too, after I did this experiment.
What experiment did I hear you say?
Well, let me tell you. It all began when my mum made an amazing pasta.
A few weeks ago, my mum made a delicious and super cool purple cabbage pasta. She called me over to show me and I was very grumpy because she interfered with my reading. I love to read. But this time I was reading my favourite author’s book and I was not happy. I trudged over and asked her”what.”
She excitedly passed me a lemon and asked me to squeeze it over the pasta. Now she made me mad. She called me all the way over here, distracting me from one of my favourite books all to make me squeeze a lemon?! I was so mad you could practically see the steam coming out of my ears! But I knew the quickest way to get back to reading was by doing what mum asked. So I did. But what I didn’t know was that this pasta would remind me of one of the magic tricks we watch.
That’s exactly what the pasta did. It changed colour! I couldn’t believe what I had thought about her being super annoying! Staring at that pasta as it went from a light bluish-purple to a pinkish- red where the lemon juice had touched it,I never knew pasta to change colour!!.
This is cool and I wanted to learn more so I asked my mum if I could try some other liquids and see the effect it had and to my delight, she said yes! and handed over a quarter of the purple cabbage which was left.
Let the magic unfold
The process began with making that purple cabbage juice
Here is what you need
1/4 of purple cabbage
2 cups of water
and a saucepan
Grate the cabbage and add it to the saucepan. Add the water and ask an adult to help you boil it. ( microwaving is fine too. it will be hot when you remove it) Once it is boiled well and the colour filters into the water turn off the heat and cool it down.
Meanwhile, go collect the other needed ingredients. You will need an adult to be with you for this.
I had collected these.( I have numbered the same in the picture)
- Vinegar
- Bleach
- Saltwater ( mixed a tsp of salt with half cup water)
- Baking powder solution ( baking powder mixed in water, Solution is a new word I got for this)
- Sugarwater ( mixed a tsp of sugar with half cup water)
- Soda water
- Lemon juice
- Hand sanitizer mixed in water
After this, I poured quarter cup of purple cabbage juice into each cup. Guess what? Magic happened again, this time various colours. See for yourself. Loved the colours.
Here is what happened?
The purple cabbage juice is what we call an indicator. Indicators change colour when they are mixed with acids and bases. Now, Acids and bases are two types of liquids that we see opposite to each other ( have to learn more about it, but if you are ready to read, try this. The colour from the purple cabbage (anthocyanin) changes when acid touches it to pink and reds. The bases made them from blue to green to yellow.
Now I have some more of that purple cabbage juice. I will play with that later, now I have to clean up.
Tip from mum, don’t pour the bleach into the drain, mix it with plenty of water before you do.
So that’s for today and hope you have some magic too.
Here are a couple more you can try
If you like to try this later here is the pin.
All those sciency cabbages!!! on Pininterest
