Pepper and a Bar of Soap

I found this really fun experiment on someone's blog, but I can't remember where, and If I could, I would link up to it.

First, we put some water in a bowl  and the boys put their fingers in to test out the water. 

Next, we sprinkled in some pepper and the boys put their fingers in to see what would happen.

When they pulled the fingers out of the water, their fingers were covered with pepper, or "dirty", as we liked to say.

We cleaned off the pepper to get ready for the next experiment. This time we rubbed our fingers all over a bar of soap.  This was a new experience for the boys since we never use bar soap at our house!

Next, we put the soapy fingers into the water with the pepper (aka dirt!)  When the soapy fingers went in, the pepper, in Elliott's words, "moved away", and he said, "the soap was pushing it away."

When we pulled our soapy fingers out of the water, they were clean - no pepper!

We didn't get into the details about surface tension and how soap changes the molecules of the water this time, but Elliott thought this was super cool!  It was a great experiment to show how soap cleans things!

As always, when doing experiments with kids, the original experiment turned into other investigations.  Here's a pic of Elliott playing and experimenting with the soap, water and pepper.  That night when we took a bath,  you guessed it, the soap went into the tub for more experimenting!!

If and when we do this again, I will use a bigger dish for the water.  I think the boys wanted to do a little more playing around than I had planned on (silly me), and a bigger container would work better.