Color Changing Flower Science Experiment Spring STEM

Color changing flower science is a wonderfully simple science and STEM experiment you can do any time of the year. Also great for both the Spring season and Valentine’s Day! Fun kitchen science that is super easy to set up and is perfect for home or classroom science. We love science activities for all seasons!

Color Changing Flower Science Experiment

Why not pick up a bunch of simple white flowers at the grocery store and pull out the food coloring. This color changing flower science experiment is a STEMy activity (pun intended).

COLOR CHANGING FLOWERS

Get ready to add this simple color changing carnations experiment to your Spring STEM lesson plans this season. If you want to learn about how water moves through plants and how the plant’s petals can change color, let’s get started. While you’re at it, make sure to check out this other fun collection of Spring STEM activities.

Our science activities and experiments are designed with you, the parent or teacher, in mind! Easy to set up, quick to do, most activities will take only 15 to 30 minutes to complete (or they can be easily set aside and observed) and are heaps of fun! Plus, our supplies lists usually contain only free or cheap materials you can source from home!

Plus, you don’t have to just use carnations either. We have also tried the walking water experiment too! You can even make a rainbow of walking water for your junior scientist. Learn all about capillary action through hands-on exploration.

YOU WILL NEED:

White flowers (experiment with different varieties)
Vases or mason jars
Food coloring

Looking for easy to print activities, and inexpensive problem-based challenges?

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HOW TO MAKE COLOR CHANGING CARNATIONS:

STEP 1: Trim the stems of the white flowers (carnations work really well but these are what our local store had at the time) at an angle under water.

STEP 2: Squirt several drops of each color food into different glasses and fill halfway with water.

STEP 3: Place the stems into the vase.

STEP 4: Watch your carnations turn colors.

MAKE IT AN EXPERIMENT!

Ask questions! Try different approaches! Test and explore!

What if you cut the stems shorter instead?
What if you change the type of flower?
How long do you think it will take for the flowers to start to change color?
Does one color come through faster than the others?

Click below to get your quick and easy STEM challenges.

COLOR CHANGING FLOWERS IN THE CLASSROOM

Although this color changing flowers science project does take some time to fully see the results, make sure you check in on it occasionally and observe the changes in the flowers. You might want to set a timer every so often and have your kids record any changes over the period of a day! Set it up in the morning and observe the changes at different times during the day.

You could turn these color changing flowers activity into a science experiment in a couple of ways:

Compare results using different types of white flowers. Does the type of flower make a difference?
Keep the type of white flower the same but try different colors in the water to see if that makes a difference.

THE SCIENCE OF COLOR CHANGING FLOWERS

The cut flowers take up water through their stem and the water moves from the stem to the flowers and leaves. Water travels up tiny tubes in the plant by a process called Capillary Action. Putting a colored dye in the water in the vase allows us to observe capillary action at work.

What is capillary action?

Capillary action is the ability of a liquid (our colored water) to flow in narrow spaces (the flower stem) without the help of an outside force, like gravity. As water evaporates from a plant, it is able to be pull up more water through the plant’s stem. As it does so, it attracts more water to come alongside it. This is called transpiration and cohesion.