"Emily, we are doing this experiment with celery, food coloring, and three temperatures of water. After an hour, nothing has happened. Do you know what should happen?? Thanks"
I did a quick Google search just to make sure that my instinct was correct. The hot water should cause the food coloring to be absorbed quicker and the cold water should go slower. But I didn't think one hour would be long enough to show any results. The textbook said to do the experiment for an hour checking every 15 minutes.
Another issue I thought of: over time, the water temperatures would become the same, especially if it were going to take over an hour to complete. How to maintain the integrity of the experiment?
The cold one could be kept in the fridge. The warm one could be kept in the oven with the light on. But this particular school's oven wouldn't be able to do that. Back to the drawing board. How about putting the cup in a crockpot of water on warm? For that matter, you could set the cold water jar in a bowl of ice cubes. Room temp obviously on the counter as a control to compare.
I wasn't sure you'd be able to see the color creeping up through the celery. My friend said the book's picture showed colored leaves, but he worried because his celery leaves were wilted, it wouldn't work. I assured him the wilted leaves wouldn't be a problem.
Maybe slicing the stalk horizontally would show the color moving up? You could take an inch off each stalk to measure the distance the dye traveled.
My friend decided to wait it out. "Update: after the soccer game, I put the celery in cold water in the fridge. I left the other 2 out. They can both be room temperature examples, or I may add hot water to the one in red."
Another update this morning: "This morning, the room temperature celery is noticeably colored."
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