We’ve tried stacking rainbow layers of corn syrup, rubbing alcohol, vegetable oil, soap, water, and other ingredients before… but what if we only have water, sugar, and food coloring or coloring tablets to experiment with? Check out this Sugar Rainbow experiment, also known as the rainbow in a jar, an easy way to learn about density with Steve Spangler Science:
Density is the measurement of how much “stuff” is packed into a measured space. That’s how we get the equation for density: Density = Mass (the stuff) ÷ Volume (a measured space). Nearly every substance and material imaginable has a different density. This is especially true for the six solutions you made using sugar and water.
By increasing the amount of sugar in the solution but keeping the amount of water constant, you create solutions that have increasing densities. The more sugar that’s mixed into a measured amount of water, the higher the density of the mixture. As the Sugar Rainbow reveals, a solution with a low density stacks on top of a mixture with a high density.
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