Oil and Water Painting

Materials:

• Cooking Oil
• Liquid water color or food coloring
• Droppers or squirt bottles
• Paper (watercolor paper works best)
• Paper towels
• Optional: tray or newspaper to contain any spills

• Step 1: Dilute liquid water color with water in a 1:1 dilution.
  • Alternative: Slowly add food dye to water until the desired color is reached.
• Step 2: Water color and cooking oil should be placed into separate squirt bottles, or into separate shallow containers if using pipettes.

• Step 3: Begin dropping oil and watercolor onto the paper.
  • What happens if you drop watercolor on top of oil? Or oil on top of water color?
  • Try dropping multiple different colors onto the oil. Do those colors mix?
  • Why do you think that the oil and watercolor do not mix?

Explanation

• Oil and water do NOT mix, they are immiscible . Oil molecules are attracted to other oil molecules so they stick together. Water molecules are the same way!
• Another reason that oil and water do not mix is that they have different densities. Check out Rainbow Water Stack to learn more about density!