(Intro)

There! It's perfect! Oh, hi! Squeaks and I are making pictures! I'm painting a picture of Squeaks. Squeaks, what are you painting? It's beautiful! I love the colors you used!

The world is filled with all kinds of colors. Just look around you. How many colors can you name?

When I'm making a painting, I like to use all of the paints that I have. But sometimes that's just not enough. And when that happens, I've gotta get creative. Have you ever tried to make a new color? Well, you can! After all, painting is all about making new things right from your imagination.

And when you mix colors together, you're experimenting, trying out new things to see what happens. Just like scientists do. So let's do some color experiments.

First, grab a grown-up. Then find a spot where you can get a little messy. The kitchen might be a good spot. Now you'll have to grab some supplies. First, see if you have an ice cube tray. If you don't have one of those, just find six empty glasses. You'll also need a few paint brushes, three ought to do. And finally, instead of paint, let's do our experiments with food coloring. All you'll need are red, yellow, and blue.

Now fill the ice cube tray with water, about halfway to the top. Then carefully put a few drops of each color in three separate cubes. So, what do we have? We added red, yellow, and blue coloring to clear water. So we have red, yellow, and blue water. Now what would happen if we combined two of the colors together? Let's find out.

Take one of your paint brushes, and put a couple of drops of yellow coloring into a cube filled with clear water. Now use a fresh, clean brush to add a few drops of blue coloring into the same cube.

What color do you think the water will be? Let's see. Mixing blue and yellow together made a whole new color: green! Can we do it again?

Let's find another cube in the tray that has clear water in it. Let's mix a few drops of blue with a few drops of red. We made purple! We've got one more mix to try.

This time, let's put a couple of drops of yellow in, and then a couple drops of red. Any guess what color it might make? Let's find out. Orange!

So when you mix equal amounts of yellow and blue, it makes a new color: green. And when you combine yellow and red, you get orange. And red and blue mixed together make purple! But let's keep mixing the colors, and keep experimenting.

For example, what happens if you add three drops of blue and only one drop of red? It's purple, but a darker color. What happens when you mix the green you made with a drop of blue? It makes a darker green.

Now, those first three colors we started with, red, yellow, and blue, are special colors. They're called primary colors, because they can't be made by mixing any other colors together. But you can mix them in different combinations to make lots of other colors.

So primary colors are the main colors that can be combined in different ways to make pretty much anything else.

Now that you know this, you can use what you've learned about colors when you're painting. Do you want to paint a green tree but you don't have any green paint? Just mix yellow and blue. Want a darker green? Add more blue. Lighter green? Add more yellow. Keep playing with the colors, mixing and combining, until you come up with the exact shade you're looking for.

Did you try our color experiment? How did it go? We'd love to hear about it! So get help from a grown-up, and send us a picture of your color experiment to kids@thescishow.com. I'll see you next time.

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