100 Days of Science #88-- Tie Dying Science

We've tie dyed shirts a few times in the past for a fun summer project but when I stumbled upon a small article on Steve Spangler about the science of tie dying, I just knew we had to try one more time for a fun SCIENCE project!  

This time we soaked our shirts in a water and washing soda bath before dying them.  The washing soda opens up the areas of the cotton where the dyes chemically bond allowing for a better, color fast batch of shirts.  You only need to soak the shirts for 30 minutes but we left them in the bath overnight. 

The next morning we wrung all the water we could out of shirts and decided on how we wanted to fold or roll them up for our patterns.  Once rolled we brought them out onto the sand using a drying rack placed over a cookie sheet to try and contain any mess.

Evan chose to roll his top around an old cardboard tube and scrunch it in the middle... now we should have wrapped the tube in plastic wrap or something before doing this because the cardboard itself left some dye on the shirt when we were all done.  However, never having tried this we just followed the directions and hoped for the best.

I wanted rainbow stripes so I rolled my shirt and secured it with elastic bands all the way down to the bottom.

We picked out our colors from this tie dye kit we ordered and got them all ready.

Then we began adding colors to our shirts until we had the as saturated as we wanted.

These tubes really did make it easy to apply color right where we wanted it.

The boys also worked together to make a shirt for their grandmother for her birthday.

Once our shirts were all done we rolled them up in plastic wrap and set them in Ziploc bags overnight.

The next day we rinsed each shirt with the hose until the water ran clean and then washed and dried each shirt in the washing machine.  

They came out great!

Here's the shirt they made for my mother- in- law

My shirt

The boys' shirts

Basically what we understood is that tie dying is a chemical reaction where the dyes and the fabric molecules bond together so that the dye actually becomes part of the fabric.  

Have you ever tried tie dying? 

Others in this series:

1.  Bernoulli's Principle

2.  Field Trip to the Ecotarium 

3.  Learning About Air Molecules

4.  Kitchen Science; Baking cupcakes

5.  Corn Maze Field Trip 

6.  Birds of Florida 

7.  Static foil drum

8.  Un-Make it Monday; Seeing Inside our DVD/VCR player

9. Wind Tunnel Experiment 

10. Biomes Marine Biology Center Field Trip  

11. Disappearing Coin Trick and the Science Behind it. 

12.  Snuff Out a Candle with Baking Soda and Vinegar

13.  Making Plastic from Milk

14.  Pencil in the Rice Friction Experiment

15 & 16.  Two Experiments using SNOW

17.  Making an Iceberg 

18.  Making an Egg Float

19.  Looking at Microscopic Organisms 

20.  Eco Plant pals

21&22.  Two Experiments with Cotton Candy

23. Springfield Science Museum Trip

24.  Teaching Children the Signs of Spring

25.  Color Changing Slime

26.  Growing Tickle Me Plants

27.  Learning About Soil Sampling

28.  Making Super Bouncy Balls 

29. Exploring the New England Shoreline

30.  Color Changing Flower Experiment 

31.  Roger Williams Zoo Trip

32.  Edible Silly Putty 

33.  Raising Tadpoles

34. More Microscope Fun

35. Making Homemade Ice Cream

36.  Observing Plants Breathe 

37.  Trip to Save the Bay Exploration Center and Aquarium

38. Making Fresh Peach Preserves 

39.  Making Solar S'mores

40.  Growing a Crystal Garden

41 & 42.  Jolly Rancher Candy Apples and Lollipops

43.  Volcanic Lemons 

44.  Oozing Pumpkins 

45.  Growing a Germ Farm

46.  Looking at the Germ Farm Under a Microscope

47 & 48.  Building Model Molecules Two Ways 

49.  Kitchen Chemistry Experiments 

50.  Fall Leaf Chromatography 

51.  Color Changing Experiments with Iodine

52.  Learning About Birds in Winter

53. Iodine and Starch Experiment
54. Flouride and Calcium Experiment
55. Botanical Gardens in Winter
56.  Making Cell Models
57. Which Has More Water; Ice or Snow?
58. Exploding Snow and Water Baggies
59.  Exploring Minerals
60. Visiting the Hartford Science Museum
61-63. 3 STEM Bridge Challenges
64. Making Models of the Earth
65. Plate Techtonics with Graham Crackers
66.  Homemade Lava Lamp
67.  Science Movies We're Watching
68. Index Card Towers
69.  Botany at the Botanical Gardens
70. Best Board Games for Science 
71. Homemade Frozen Yogurt Pops
72.  Starburst Rock Cycle 
73. & 74. Sinking a Marshmallow
75. Jumping Conversation Hearts 
76-78. Building a Paper Airplane 3 Ways 
79. Learning About Hummingbirds 
80.  Planting an Herb Garden 
81. Mushroom Spores 
82. - 84.  Penny Saturation Experiments 
85. Sink or Float?
86. Disappearing Ink 
87. Sedment Layer Jars