P14 - Water can walk?

Inu was very excited in our last experiment (P13 - How plants drink water?) due to some magic feeling and beautiful colours. So, she asked, 'mumma can we do more colourful experiments?' I replied, 'Yes sure', as I wanted to show one more Capillary Action Experiment. 

I asked her, 'have you ever seen water flowing from up to down?' She said, 'mumma that always happen. Have you not seen the waterfalls.' Then I asked her, 'have you ever noticed water walking from down to up?' As I was expecting she replied, 'its impossible.'  I happily told her today I will show you water can walk up. 

I asked her fill two glasses with water and roll paper towel as shown in picture.

What we need:

        - Three glasses

        - Water

        - Paper towel

        - Food Colouring

Then we mixed different food colourings in two glasses and put the folded paper towel in the glasses such that one side of the paper towel roll is in the filled glass and the other side is in the empty glass.

After few seconds only, Inu observed water walking up through paper towel. She was very excited about it and asked is it also magic. I explained, its not magic, its actually science.  The water is moving same as it was moving up in the flower in our last experiment. The small small holes in the paper towel give space of water to go up. 

The paper towel have gaps in fiber, and water moves up in these gaps through  capillary action. She liked this one and observed the other glass getting filled with this process. 

She also observed that the water movement stops when all three glasses have same amount of water. 

She wanted to do more of this so I asked her to repeat the experiment with different type of solids. She repeated it with newspaper, glossy paper and cloth.

The water walking speed is maximum in cloth, then newspaper. In glossy paper it didn't move as the glossy paper don't have gaps. 

After the experiment is finished while washing the glasses Inu asked, 'mumma how did you know that water can walk'. We both enjoyed this experiment and learnt more about how capillary action allows water to move through solids. But I liked her question after the experiment the most. And the answer of her question took me to my childhood. 

I remember once when we were going out for vacation, my mom was worried about the plants we had. We use to have a lot of tree and pot plants in our backyard garden. So, mumma and my sister was trying different solutions. The drip irrigation was available when we were kids. For some of the pot plans they dip one end of rope in water tank and other in the pot and I observed the water walking up through the rope. Inu likes it and said nani and mausi are awesome. Of course she did repeated this in our balcony garden but I forgot to click the pictures.