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Walking Water

이미지 제공: Lubomirkin

Can water walk?

Imagine this. Water in a cup walks along the path, crosses a bridge, and moves into an empty cup. Sounds interesting, right? Let's do this fun science experiment and learn what capillary action is. 

 Materials

  • 7 clear cups

  • food coloring

  • water

  • paper towel

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 Procedures

  1. First, lay out 7 clear cups beside each other.

  2. Fill up the first, third, fifth and seventh cup with water. Fill the water to almost the top of the cup.

  3. In the first cup, add a few drops of red food coloring.

  4. Add yellow food coloring in the third cup.

  5. And blue in the fifth cup.

  6. For the seventh cup, add red or pink.

  7. Now fold up six paper towels and fold them in half.

  8. Place the paper towel in between each of the clear cups.

  9. Observe how water walks along the path.

Science Behind It

You saw that water was flowing through the paper towel and filled up the empty cups. How does the water get from one cup to the other? With the process called capillary action. The paper towel is made from fibers and the water is able to travel through the gaps in the fibers. The gaps in the paper towel act like capillary tubes and pull the water upward. That’s because the adhesive force between the paper towel and the water are more powerful than the cohesive force inside the water itself. This results in the paper towel pulling the water up. The water keeps traveling up the paper towel, across the bridge and into the other cup.

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