Gan Bet's Oily Mix Up

Learning about the nes of Chanukah led us to explore the properties of oil. We learned that oil comes from olives, which grow on trees. We counted 26 olives, and pressed them with a garlic press, to see how much oil we would get. We only measured 4 1/2 teaspoons! We realized that it takes a lot of olives to make just a little oil.

We also conducted more experiments with oil. The children compared a mixture of paint and water with a mixture of paint and oil. They sharpened their fine motor skills by squeezing droppers with these mixtures. While the water mixture spread quickly on their papers, the oil mixture dropped in clumps, and the oil spread out around the paint. We knew from last week's experiment that water and oil don't mix; now we learned that oil doesn't mix with paint either!

To further test the oil's propensity to separate from other liquids, we predicted what might happen if we added salt to a mixture of oil, water, and food coloring. Initially, the salt attached to the oil, making it heavier, so that it sunk to the bottom of the bottle. However, when we came back from lunch, we saw that the oil was now on top, and the water on the bottom! We learned that the salt had dissolved, and so the oil separated from the oil.