Travis and I have explored density with a jar like this in the past, but our layers haven’t always mixed quite right. Using our past experience as a guide, Travis helped set up the following 6 liquids today:

Corn Syrup

Maple Syrup

Water – tinted blue

Dish Soap – tinted green

Vegetable Oil

Rubbing Alcohol – tinted red

A few of the liquids were left their natural color but for those that would otherwise be confusingly clear, we added a little all-natural food coloring.

Travis and I talked briefly about our hypothesis (the day’s fancy word!) for the order they should go in. The only one we got wrong was water and dish soap, having thought water would float atop the soap, but it turned out to be the opposite.

As our layers took shape, Travis loved bending down to see the strata.

The red alcohol on top was hard to see, but the rest of the layers were quite well demarcated. Overall, this was a neat little STEM experiment in a jar.