LIQUIDS ON A PENNY
BY MATT, REID, AND NOAH
For the four experiments, we used four
liquids. The liquids are (in the order of which we
did first, second, third, and fourth):
SPRITE
MELTED
MARGARINE
BLUE GATORADE
SKIM MILK
Sprite
We did the Sprite on a penny experiment first.
It wasn’t our most favorite one, but it was fun
just the same. One of the cool things about it
was that you could always see Mr. Lincoln
through the Sprite, and sometimes if you had
enough on the penny, you could see bubbles.
Which just strikes me as cool.
Look at the bubbles.
It’s just a great, closeup picture that all
three of us like.
Melted Margarine
We did the Melted
Margarine Experiment
second. It was thicker
than water, Sprite,
Gatorade, and milk, and
was a golden yellow color.
There were some whitishclear little bubble spots in
it, and if we don’t shake it
for a while, the top
thickens and turns
whitish and a bit clear. If
you put about 5 drops on
a penny, you’ll probably
see small yellow chunks,
and where the margarine
is thinnest, a pearly
white-brown color
because the copper of the
penny shows through.
Gatorade
Well, we have a TON of Gatorade pictures, and
I deleted half of them. It is unknown why in the
world we have so many, but some things will
just have to stay mysteries.
We found that in the bigger Gatorade bottle, the Gatorade is a very dark blue. In the smaller vials and
droppers, it is a more translucent, lighter, blue. This is because the more Gatorade you have together,
the darker it is and the harder it is to see through it. This also applies to water, and many other
things, I’m sure.
This is a great photo of surface tension at work. The
tiny rim of the penny provides a bit of room for the
Gatorade, but the large blue bubble on top of the
penny is only capable of keeping it’s shape because
of… surface tension. Isn’t it amazing?
The penny before it touches Gatorade…
The penny with Gatorade on it.
Any ideas on why this BLUE Gatorade looks green?
Because the brown paper showing through the blue Gatorade makes it look green?
Because the camera, flash, and lighting did something funky?
Any others?
MILK PICTURES
The three of us did the skim milk
experiment last. It was a fun one. Matt
got some skim milk from breakfast, and
he put it in the fridge in the teacher’s
lounge with Mrs. Loucks, until we
needed it in Science for the experiment.
Milk
Continued:
Aren’t these pictures awesome? The extremely close up one shows how
surface tension affects liquids by letting the liquid round out and get
bigger like a filled bubble before it has to spread out over the penny. This
same principle applies to how liquids hold their shape when they cover all
of the penny and are higher than the rim.
We had a lot of milk
pictures too.
Surface Tension of Milk
BEHIND THE SCENES

Noah and I found that the thicker a liquid is, the greater the
surface tension it has.
All of this info here is based on our experiments and findings:



Sprite is apparently thinner than water because it doesn’t fit as
many drops on a penny. Then milk is the next thickest, because it
has the second to least drops that fit on a penny, now Gatorade (it
has the third to least), and finally, melted margarine, the thickest
of the four liquids that we used.
But what is weird, is that water fit as many drops on a penny as
melted margarine and Gatorade, not like we thought. In the
beginning, we thought that water is thinner than Sprite, which
we found was totally wrong. Sprite’s average droppage was 10,
and for my (Matt’s) water on a penny experiment, I got 28-31
drops of water on my penny.
Our favorite experiments were the Gatorade and melted
margarine one.