2013년 9월 2일 월요일

Class 1: An informal, hypothetical lab report of the 'Dancing Milk' experiment

   

A.   Hypothesis

The drop of dish soap, which is a surfactant, had caused the food coloring to disperse throughout the surface of the milk.

 

B.    Procedures

1.    Pour enough milk into three separate pans.

2.    Add several drops of food coloring to each pan.

3.    Add a drop of dish soap to the first pan, a drop of alcohol to the second, and a drop of sesame oil to the third.

4.    Observe the changes in each pan.

 

C.     Expectation

Surfactant molecules like dish soap are usually known to be amphiphilic, meaning they contain both hydrophilic groups (heads) and hydrophobic groups (tails). As their names suggest, the hydrophilic group of the molecules actively interacts with water (in this case, milk) and the hydrophobic group with oil (food coloring), weakening the surface tension of the milk (by weakening the intermolecular force, the hydrogen bond, existing between the milk molecules) and eventually blending the food coloring with it, a phenomenon ostensibly viewed by the observer as ‘spread’.  

The hypothesis that the dispersion of the coloring is attributable to the amphiphilic property of the dish soap may be verified by adding alcohol and sesame oil, which are substances that are hydrophilic and hydrophobic respectively, to two separate pans of milk and comparing the changes. Since neither of the two are amphiphilic, it is very likely that they do not function as surfactants and consequently not spread the food coloring as the dish soap did.        

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