An Easy Science Project: Rainbow Celery

This easy science project shows that plants are continually taking up water from their roots and losing it through their leaves...even when they are cut and for sale! This experiment also lets your child create unusually coloured celery...sure to be remembered!

Materials Needed: You will need the following:

* a bunch of fresh celery with leaves still on it
* several different coloured food dyes
* several drinking glasses

Procedure for each colour being tested:

Step 1: Place about 1cm of food dye in the bottom of a glass.

Step 2: Cut a stalk of celery from the bunch. Make sure the cut is straight and is not at all dried out.

Step 3: Place the cut end of the celery stick into the glass containing the dye.

Step 4: Wait and see what happens!

What Is Happening?

Plants draw water to their leaves from their roots through a process called osmosis. This relies on increasingly narrow water vessels in the plant pulling the water upwards due to the attraction of the water to the side walls of the vessels.

Note that there is no pumping mechanism in plants, which is why the plants continue to pull water (in this case from the glass with the dye in it) even after their roots have been removed. The food dye is simply adding colour to the water so that it can be seen as it travels up the stems of the celery sticks.

If several different colour dyes are tested together, the result can be a nice rainbow coloured bouquet of celery.