Vanishing Jelly Marbles Experiment

Experiment

  1. Use the white scoop to pour one teaspoon’s worth of dry Jelly Marbles into the 9 oz plastic cup.
  2. Fill the cup with water. Good quality water that does not contain high levels of iron or minerals is best. If you’re uncertain as to the quality of your tap water, invest a small amount in distilled water at the grocery store. You’ll see a difference! Set the cup aside in a warm location for several hours. It’s OK to check on their growth now and then but be sure to wash your hands before touching them so you keep the water and the marbles clean. Dirty water and grubby mitts are not their friends. To be safe, you might want to use a spoon.
  3. After about five hours, the Jelly Marbles should be fully grown. Reach into the cup and gently scoop up a handful of Jelly Marbles. You’ll be amazed at their final size! Look at one closely and then drop it back into the water. It vanishes! You’ll have to grab it again to make sure it’s really there. Add these Jelly Marbles to the clear dish. Grow and add more to the dish until you have completely covered the bottom of it.
  4. Write a message or place a picture under the clear dish. Challenge someone to read the message or describe the picture. When they give up, fill the dish with water and watch them gasp as the message becomes crystal clear.

Materials List

  • Clear dish 
  • White teaspoon scoop 
  • 9 oz plastic cup 
  • Water 
  • Adult supervision

How Does It Work?

Jelly Marbles start out as tiny, hard spheres but, add water and the super absorbent polymer they are made from absorbs 300 times its weight in water. These hydrophilic (water loving) spheres are approximately 99% water when fully hydrated. If you look closely at a sphere in a bowl of water, you can barely see its outline. That’s because light passing through the sphere is refracted (or bent) only a tiny bit along the edge of the sphere. Without this refraction along their edges, Jelly Marbles would totally vanish altogether. In other words, the water-filled spheres become invisible due to having an identical index of refraction with the water in the bowl. The secret to keeping them this way is to keep the Marbles clean and free of dirt and oil from your skin. The more the spheres are handled, the more visible they become because dirt and oils on your skin are transferred to the surface of the spheres. This increases the amount of light reflected from the spheres and reveals them.

In the hidden message demonstration, the message looks scrambled under the hydrated spheres because the light reflected off of the message is scattered in every direction by the water-filled Jelly Marbles. It’s like trying to read through broken glass; in other words, impossible!  When water is added to the dish, the light rays pass straight through the water and the spheres into your eyes without being scattered. This is due to theJelly Marbles’ identical index of refraction with the water. So, it seems like you’re looking through a dish of plain water and can easily read the message. It’s as close as you’ll get to solid water at room temperature.

Take it Further!

Experiment

  1. Fill each of the three remaining 9 oz cups with water. Good quality water that does not contain high levels of iron or minerals is best. If you’re uncertain as to the quality of your tap water, invest a small amount in distilled water at the grocery store. You’ll see a difference!
  2. Add two red Color Fizzer tablets to one cup, two yellow tablets to another, and two blue tablets to the final cup. Let the tablets completely dissolve in the water.
  3. Use the white scoop to pour one teaspoon’s worth of dry Jelly Marbles into each of the three cups. Set the cups aside in a warm location for several hours. It’s OK to check on their growth now and then but be sure to wash your hands before touching them so you keep the water and the marbles clean. Dirty water and grubby mitts are not their friends. To be safe, you might want to use a spoon.
  4. After about five hours, the Jelly Marbles should be fully grown. Reach into the cup and gently scoop up a handful of colored Jelly Marbles. You’ll be amazed at their final size!
  5. In a new cup, add a few Jelly Marbles of each color and let them sit. Over time, you will see that where the Jelly Marbles touch each other, they will begin to share colors. Eventually, your cup of red, yellow, and blue Marbles will now include orange, green, and purple. Try adding water to this cup, what do you notice? The Jelly Marbles appear ghostly.

Want to share these amazing Jelly Marbles with your friends? place a couple in one of the included plastic vials and hand them out so your friends can enjoy their magical properties too!

Materials List

  • 9 oz plastic cup 
  • White teaspoon scoop 
  • Water 
  • Plastic vials
  • Adult supervision

Take it Even Further!

Experiment

  1. Use the white scoop to pour one teaspoon’s worth of dry Jelly Marbles into the 9 oz plastic cup.
  2. Fill the cup with water. Good quality water that does not contain high levels of iron or minerals is best. If you’re uncertain as to the quality of your tap water, invest a small amount in distilled water at the grocery store. You’ll see a difference! Set the cup aside in a warm location for several hours. It’s OK to check on their growth now and then but be sure to wash your hands before touching them so you keep the water and the marbles clean. Dirty water and grubby mitts are not their friends. To be safe, you might want to use a spoon.
  3. After about five hours, the Jelly Marbles should be fully grown. Reach into the cup and gently scoop up a handful of Jelly Marbles. You’ll be amazed at their final size! Look at one closely and then drop it back into the water. It vanishes! You’ll have to grab it again to make sure it’s really there. Add these Jelly Marbles to the glass or bowl. Grow and add more to the container until you have completely filled it with Jelly Marbles.
  4. Once the container is full of Marbles, add water to it. The Jelly Marbles should appear to vanish. Now grab a couple of Color Fizzers and drop them into the glass. What do you notice? The tablets should work their way to the bottom all the while fizzing and releasing their color. Eventually, the water will have completely changed to the color of the tablets revealing the ghostly Jelly Marbles!

    Unlike the previous experiment where you turned the Marbles different colors, once these Jelly Marbles are grown colorless, they will not change color in colored water.

Materials List

  • 9 oz plastic cup 
  • White teaspoon scoop 
  • Water 
  • Large clear glass or bowl
  • Adult supervision

Additional Information

Believe it or not, these amazing super absorbent polymers are reusable! That’s right, just let them sit out and the water will evaporate making the marbles shrink down to their original size. To help speed this process along, it’s always best to spread them out as much as possible. Keep in mind that if you chose to color your Jelly Marbles, they will always remain that color.

After they are dehydrated, add more water to them and they will grow again!

Science Fair Connection

Watching full grown Jelly Marbles vanish in water is pretty cool, but it isn’t a science fair project. You can create a science fair project by identifying a variable, or something that changes, in the Vanishing Jelly Marbles experiment. Let’s take a look at some of the variable options that might work:

      • Use what you learned about the light refraction of Jelly Marbles to test more liquids.
      • Compare the Jelly Marbles to other “clear” objects, like the glass marbles in the kit.

That’s just a couple of ideas, but you aren’t limited to those! Try coming up with different ideas of variables and give them a try. Remember, you can only change one thing at a time. If you are testing different liquids, make sure that the other factors are remaining the same!