In Year 4 we started by reading the traditional Australian story of The Rainbow Bird. The story described how the rainbow Bird got colourful feathers after she had shared fire with people.
We made our own colourful feathers using filter paper soaked in red cabbage juice. Red cabbage juice reacts differently to acids and alkalis. We found that painting with apple juice or lemon juice turned the paper pink, whereas painting with floor cleaner or washing liquid turned the paper blue/green.
The next day there was a mystery to solve when a trophy disappeared and the kidnapper left a note. We used chromatography to split the black ink from the note into its different colours, and then tested other black pens to match the ink and find out which pen was used.
In a science assembly on Wednesday, Mrs Weston, a teacher from AHS, showed us a colour wheel where the 7 colours of the rainbow mixed to turn white. We decided to have a go at our own colour spinners and experimented mixing different colours.
On Thursday we tried the Skittles experiment where were very excited by the colourful patterns that were created by the Skittles in the water.
The next day we repeated the experiment but chose to change one thing. We tried putting Skittles in cola, lemonade, milkshake and warm water. We also tried changing the number, and type of sweets. We particularly enjoyed watching what happened to Skittles as they sat on top of a plate of ice.
At the end of the week, we learnt about hues, tints, shades and tones. We painted different tints of a colour, by adding white, and different shades of a colour by adding black.
