ScienceMakers Toolkit Manual - The History Makers

Chemistry
Instructions:
• Fill small cup halfway with oil.
• Add 4 drops red, 4 drops blue, and 4 drops yellow food coloring to oil. Use plastic fork to break up the
drops. Try not to let the color drops mix together.
• Carefully pour the mixture of oil and food colors onto the top of the water in the large glass.
• Don’t stir the water! Watch closely and draw what you observe!
What’s Going On?
Food color is water-based. Oil and water do not mix, but can be blended. The food color will mix with the water
faster if its surface area is increased. Matter, such as water, oil, and food color, is made up of molecules, all of
which are in a constant state of motion. Even without stirring the water in the container, the colors will mix and
fall because of molecular motion and gravity.
At what point can you see orange, purple, or green? What is causing these colors to emerge?
Bobby L. Wilson - Video Clip Transcription
Clip 1 - Attitude About School: I always had a love for school, including Sunday school. Still go to Sunday
school. And I always did pretty good in school. My mother never had to bother me about studying and all this
stuff about… I didn’t need nobody to tell me to study. I had my assignments. I did my assignments. Nobody
ever said anything to me about it. My brother right under me was just the opposite, and my sister next to him
was just the opposite. What I really wanted to be was… I knew I wanted to go to college. I was pretty good at
math, and I loved math and science. And Sputnik came along. And so the space age had a great impact on what
I thought I wanted to be. It was gonna be some kind of science.
Clip 2 - Experience in High School: I basically just went to high school, got my lesson. They put me in the
shop when I fi rst got there. Woodwork. Taught me how to build houses. How to lay bricks. So, I got some
houses in Columbus that I’ve actually built and bricks that I’ve laid. And I stayed in there two years in this,
what they call the shop. They didn’t even have me in the college prep… And so my junior and senior year I
had to do a little catching up and I had to start advising myself. After the fi rst two years, you’re in this shop,
and then the second two years you’re supposed to do something kind of domestic, whatever. You go off in the
afternoon, go downtown and work. Well that’s where I parted company with this track. And, I decided I’d go
over and start taking all the math they had, and I took the chemistry in the junior year and physics in my senior
year and the highest they had in math was Algebra II. So, I took Algebra I and then Geometry and then Algebra
II. So, I pretty much well decided I was going to prepare my own self for college, because they were putting me
in the domestic track.
Clip 3 - Knowing He Would do Science: I was fully aware and had fears and very conscious of the kind of
world, you know, that we were living in. My uncle had served in the Korean Confl ict, and he would come home
telling me wild stories. And so, the Russians was a big fear to me, the atomic bomb or some more atomic bombs
and then the hydrogen bomb, which is more powerful than the atomic bomb. And so I would spend a lot of my
time envisioning, well how long can you stay in a shelter? How long will the food last? And so, I knew I was
going off to college, I knew I would major in some kind of science. I knew it was not going to be biology. I did
not want to be a medical doctor, because my parents used to make me stay with the older people who were sick.
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