Magical Rainbow Paper

This simple STEAM activity will wow your little ones! You get a unique piece of art every single time!

Magical rainbow paper.

What you need:
- black card

- clear nail polish (we ended up using clear nail strengthener)
- pipette
- bowl of water
- paper towels

The set up.

How it works:

This is such an awesome process art project. What we enjoyed most is that each time you do the process, a unique piece of bright and beautiful art is created.

Unique rainbow swirls each time.

Add water to your bowl and have all other materials ready on a tray or table. Simply add one drop of the nail polish to the water and then wait a few seconds. Slowly submerge the card under water. Hold and then remove the card from the water.

Add one drop of nail polish.

Push the black card down on the water and hold.

Once your little one turns the card over they will be amazed at the rainbow pattern that has appeared!

Revealing the rainbow pattern.

Amazed at the transformation!

Once the card has dried, you are left with some fantastic shiny rainbow paper. We haven't decided how to use ours yet, too many possibilities!

Beautiful rainbow paper.

Definitely has the wow factor!

So how does it work? When you pull the card out of the water a thin film of nail polish remains on the card. This is a great opportunity to introduce some science to your kids. This experiment works on the same basis as oil mixing with water on the road after it has rained. This is called thin film interference. We talked about this on a very basic level and just discussed how different amounts of light were reflected according to the thickness of the nail polish layer on the card. This causes certain colours to be intensified on the black card.

Thin film interference.

We loved this activity so much and couldn't stop doing it! It's fair to say that it doesn't work all the time, you have to be patient and try to dip the card in just as you see the nail polish film start to spread.