Solutions Investigating
6th Grade Scientists
January 21, 2010
Sixth graders recently did a lab activity mixing several materials together to investigate which materials were solvents and which were solutes.
The first thing we observed was that oil does not mix with water. Since oil is less dense than water, it floats on top. When we added food coloring to the solution in the bottle we found that the coloring was soluble in water (since the water turned color) but not soluble in oil (since the oil didn’t change color).
When we were finished with the experiment, we had to classify the materials in the bottle. We decided that water was a solvent since something was dissolved into it. Food coloring was the solute since it dissolved into something. Oil was a little trickier to classify. We finally decided that it was neither a solvent nor a solute.
