Earth Science: You Can Do It!

We have been talking about the earth and what it is made of and how it works for the past and current units. As part of this unit we did what was a really cool science experiment about how magma stays molten and moves under the crust.

Stuff you need:

1. A large bowl or Jar filled with cold water
2. A smaller jar filled with hot/boiling water(jar must be able to be submersible in the larger bowl or jar)
3. liquid food coloring(color doesn't mater)

• first you take the smaller jar with the hot water and add the food coloring. It doesn't matter what color you choose, what you are looking for here is contrast. The picture shows us using red, but really, the kids loved it no matter what color it was including when we did "green magma"
• then you carefully lowered it into the cold water(PLEASE use tongs of some kind and be very careful. The first time I did this, I used my hands and it was a very "warm" experience.)
• Observe the swirling currents of "mantle". After we colored what it looked like on our lab sheet, we put our hands in the water and noticed that it was very warm at the top and cool at the bottom and that all the mantle would circulate back up around the top. 

Here is our experiment (please excuse the counter clutter, and yes those are girl scout cookies!)