The Little Tinkerer

PAINT THE ROSES RED

In the tale of Alice in Wonderland the gardeners found suddenly found themselves in a tricky spot. All of the roses in the garden were WHITE when the Queen of Hearts demanded that all flowers must be RED!!! What to do??

If only the Queen’s gardeners had known this scientific experiment, they could have fixed the problem in no time, and escaped the Queen’s wrath.

WHAT YOU NEED:

-              4 Glasses

-              Red and Blue Food Coloring

-              3 Fresh White Flowers

-              Scissors

HOW TO DO THE EXPERIMENT:

1.        Fill two glasses with blue food coloring, and two glasses with red food coloring. Then add ¼ cup of water to each glass.

2.        Cut the stems of each of the flowers at an angle with scissors. With the third flower, slice ¾ of the stem down the middle using a knife.

3.        Place the first flower in the glass filled with blue food coloring. Place the second flower in the glass filled with red food coloring. With the third flower, place one end of the stem in the second blue food coloring glass and the other in the second glass of red food coloring.

4.        Let the flowers soak for a few days, and WATCH THE COLORS CHANGE!!

WHY DOES IT WORK?

Plants absorb water through their roots. The water moves up the stem into the leaves and flowers. When a flower is cut from its roots, the stem becomes the point where the flower “drinks”. Through transpiration and cohesion, water moves up the plant similar to the way water moves up a straw. Coloring the water that the plant takes up does not damage the plant; however, it does allow us to see how water moves through the flower. Splitting the stem shows another cool idea – the tubes at which water moves up the stem exist all across the stem and run all the way up to the petals of the flower.