Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

My daughter (grade 5) and I have been working on a project for her science class for the last few weeks. She cut squares from construction paper and taped them to a south facing window. We sat back and watched as the weeks went buy, documenting the slow change. As we sit down to type the paper and begin the display board, it seems that the papers of our weekly progress reports has dissaperared. Now we only have the end product. I searched for rates of color fading, even approximates with no luck. I would like to be able to display the whole project but cannot remember the stages. the colors we used were red, blue, green, yellow, purple, orange, pink, white.

dear jolene,

Sorry, but I am unable to find the rates of color fading, but I did find this website about how colors fade http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/colors.html.

Also, since you have the end products maybe you can compare these to new pieces of construction paper that have the same colors as the end products. You can compare the two and give a broader rate of change between new and faded pieces of paper.

good luck,
scienceexpert123

Thank you for the website, I will check it out. We do have the begining and end papers, however, I am thinking that they want to know how they changed over time. For example, in the observation, they want to know the results for week 1, 2, 3,4,5 and six, but really from memmory they have stayed the same for the last few weeks, like they have reached the last level of fading, I am just working on makeing that sound scientific, LOl science was not my strong subject.

Unless you setup some really high intensity full spectrum lighting (CAUTION: intense UV light is harmful to eyes and skin) you probably aren't going to see a lot of fading in the typical time you have to do a Science Fair Project.

This shouldn't be surprising because the goal of colored paper manufacturers is to produce a product that their customers will like and quick fading would not be a desired product attribute.