How Plants absorb Water: Celery Science Experiment

Finally we are back on schedule after all the holiday excitement! I'm so excited to start the year with a Celery science experiment. It clearly demonstrates how water moves through in plants. I got the idea from the book Thanksgiving Fun Activity Book. The Book explains the origin of Thanksgiving festival and suggests various activities for the holiday.



CJ wanted to do the celery experiment as soon as she saw the experiment on the book and after a month time we did the experiment last week. We talked about how the roots absorb water from the soil and the water travels up the tubes/capillaries in the stems to all parts of the plants

Materials Used:

Stalks of Celery with leaves
Clear plastic bottles/vases
Food coloring
Measuring cup
Water
Knife(to be used by the Adult)
Paper towels



* Please ignore the Orange extract in the picture above, I mistook it from the fridge for food coloring. Forgot to put it back while taking the picture

Steps Overview:

Fill a cup of water in the bottle and add food color. Adults can carefully cut the stalks of celery. Handover the stalks to kids and let them place the stalks of celery in the colored water.





All set! Now start noting the changes! We checked at intervals of two hours!



After 8 hrs



A closer view of the color change



After 24 hrs





Closer view

Blue colored leaves and we also noted that the drooped down leaves got restored


Pink colored leaves



We cut the stalks to check how the water traveled. I showed the little colored pores to CJ, explained how each one acted as a straw to absorb water from the roots






By chance I got to absorb these colored string structures in the celery



I carefully peeled the upper layer of the celery so that I can show the capillary tubes inside the celery to CJ





CJ got so excited that she broke the celery and started analyzing on her own:-)