Colourful Discoveries

A rainbow of colourful activities for you to try at home, inspired by the new online exhibition Colourful Discoveries on Google Arts & Culture. 

Red

Fun fact: Red is one of the oldest colours used in art and can be seen in ancient cave paintings.

Chromatography is used by scientists to separate mixtures to see what they are made of. We can use chromatography to see what colours are in the ink inside our pens. Although the lid on your pen might be black or blue or pink the ink inside is actually made up of lots of different colours. Have a go at home and see what colour ink your pens are made of. Download here. 

Orange

Fun fact: In the western world the colour orange was referred to as yellow-red until the fruit was introduced to Europe in the late 15th century.

Nature is full of wonderful colours. Take a walk or explore your garden with the colour viewer to see if you can find something to match each colour. Download here. 

Yellow

Fun fact: The colour of gold was first created from clay pigments

Have a go at making your very own density rainbow at home and share them with us on social media. 

Density is a word you use to describe how much space an object takes up (its volume) in relation to how much matter it has (it's mass). Imagine a box of chocolates. It has a certain density. If we eat all the chocolates the density of the box changes. It is less dense. This is because the mass of the chocolates has reduced but the volume of the box has stayed the same. 

Why not try adding the sugar in different quantities to different colours? Come up with your rainbow pattern. 

Watch the video here.

Green

Fun fact: Shakespeare made it the colour of jealousy when he coined the phrase ‘green-eyed monster’

There are millions of colours in the world. We can mix red, blue, and yellow paint to make every colour of the rainbow. It’s a little bit different when we are mixing light. The light that comes from the sun or other sources such as lightbulbs is called white light. We can mix three different coloured lights to make white light. Are they the same as the paint colours we mix? Have a go at our experiments and see what you can discover!

Blue

Fun fact: Blue is the world’s most popular colour

There are colours all around us. Roll the colour dice and let’s see how many coloured objects we can find in our houses. Can you make your colourful objects into a picture? Download here.

Purple

Fun fact: Until 1856 purple was the most expensive colour to produce. 

Watch this short film to find out how to make your own Spectroscope at home. Spectroscopes see all the colours that make up white light from the sun and the unique colour patterns in light from lightbulbs and other light sources