Rock Salt and Ice Experiment

Exploring with Science

With this experiment children will discover how ice turns to liquid when placing rock salt on the ice surface, they will be able to observe how the salt creates crevasses in the ice and begins to melt. In this experiment we also added liquid color and droppers so the children could also experiment with color mixing.

What you will need

• Lots of ice
• Dish pans
• Droppers
• Liquid water colors or food coloring
• Rock salt
• Small bowls for rock salt
• Spoons for sprinkling rock salt

Allow the children to sprinkle the rock salt onto the ice as it starts to melt and make the holes let them drip the colors into the holes. They will be able to experiment with color mixing on their own.

Asking Open-ended questions help children think and talk about the topics related to the activity.

• What would happen if…?
• What if we add this?
• Why do you think this happened?
• What did you notice about?
• How do you think this works?