This neat experiment with oil and ice is a great way to teach kids about density. If your child has ever noticed how oil and water don’t mix, they’ll love what happens when you try to melt ice in oil.

To start, Travis helped fill an ice cube tray. For fun variety in our final results I colored some of the compartments green with food coloring and some red, and left others clear.

Next we filled three plastic cups with vegetable oil.

Add an ice cube to each, in your different colors. The ice will start melting off in big blobs. Because water is more dense, those blobs sink down to the bottom of the cup. What fantastic oozy fun to watch!

I was glad we colored the ice, because the clear ice cube was rather underwhelming to watch, but Travis thought the big globs of green and red were super cool. Quick and easy science, in sum!