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- Today we'll make some cards. - Yeah!
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- Welcome to the Exploratorium for "Story Time Science".
Today's episode is on color
and the book we're gonna be reading
is "Black is a Rainbow Color".
It's written by Angela joy
and it's illustrated by Ekua Holmes.
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So this book starring this girl is sort of interesting
in that it's not just about colors
like the color in paint.
For her, the color black is part of her identity.
It's part of her family,
it's part of her history,
it's part of her culture
and it has a lot of different meanings
than just like black ink or black paint on the page.
Red is a rainbow color.
Green sits next to blue.
Yellow, orange, violet, indigo,
they are rainbow colors too.
But my color is black
and there's no black in rainbows.
Black is a crayon tangled in a box.
Black is a feather on white winter snow.
Black is the dirt where sunflowers grow.
My color is black.
Black are the braids in my best friend's hair.
Black are the bottoms of summertime feet.
Black are soft circles that spin down the street.
My color is black.
Black is a rhythm.
Black is the blues.
Black is sidewalking in spit shine shoes.
Black is the robe on Thurgood's back.
Black are the trains on railroad tracks.
Black are the eyes on salted peas.
Black are the shadows of old Magnolia trees.
Black is molasses from tall sugarcane.
Black is soft singing "Hush Now, Don't Explain".
Black is the skillet for bread to fry.
Black are dreams and raisins,
left out in the sun to die.
Black is the color of ink staining page.
Black is the mask that shelters his rage.
Black are the birds in cages that sing.
Black is a color.
Black is a culture.
Black is history.
Black is family.
Black is memory.
Black is community.
Black is the love that lives inside of me.
My color is black.
Black are the stones bearing witness to prayer.
Black is the faith in a freedom not seen.
Here is pictures of four black women
that did a lot to change history for the better.
Black was the man who gave the world his dream.
Black is a color.
Black is a culture.
Black is the heart of a candle and flame.
Black is the power of movement in pain.
Black are the branches that carry my name.
Weaving, rapping, lifting,
laughing, hoping, grasping, quiet, strong.
Our color is black.
So you see, there is no black in rainbows,
no black in green or blue,
but in my box of crayons, black is a rainbow too.
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We're going to start with primary colors.
Now what does the word primary mean?
The word primary means first or like primary school
or the word prime, okay?
So it means the first or the first colors.
And there are three of them.
The three primary colors are in fact yellow.
Oh, there it is.
And magenta, there's a little bit of magenta
and not blue, but not green either.
It's a turquoise color, well we can call it turquoise,
but the science name is cyan, C, Y, A, N.
I'm gonna spread these out with a brush
And here is the nice dark, hot pink
and I'll wash my brush in some water.
I don't wanna mix the colors
until I really wanna mix them
and I will brush on the yellow.
And these are the three primary or first colors.
And you use these colors to make all the other colors.
All right, so there's your yellow,
there's your dark hot pink also known as magenta
and there's your turquoise also known as cyan.
Now I'm gonna mix these colors in some water
so you can see that I can make red
and I can make blue.
So let's start with that turquoise or cyan.
A couple more drops, good.
And some yellow.
Nice yellow and some of that magenta.
All right, now I'm gonna hold these up
so you can really see the colors.
So there we have some nice cyan
and some nice yellow
and some lovely magenta.
Let me make sure secondary color.
What would that secondary color be?
Oh, let's try and make red.
All right, so we'll start with some yellow.
All right now I'm gonna add it from the dropper bottle.
I'm gonna add one drop of the hot pink, the magenta,
and let's see what happens.
I'll swirl it around.
Ooh, I haven't gotten to read yet
but I did make a nice orange.
But I wanna make red.
I already have yellow in here.
Let's add even more magenta.
Let's see if I've gotten past dark orange.
Ooh, that's a nice dark orange.
I'll show you that color.
And even a couple more drops of magenta
so I can make sure I get to a nice red.
Oh even more, another drop of magenta.
Two, three, alright.
Oh yes, that I think is a good red.
We just red out of magenta and yellow.
Now let's try and make real blue.
So are we gonna add yellow?
No, I'm not going to add yellow.
I'll wait and do that later.
I'm going to add some of the magenta.
So I'm gonna start very, very slowly
and add just let's try with a couple of drops,
oh maybe three drops and I'll swirl it around.
Oh, that's a pretty good blue.
All right, let's see if we can get a shot of them
side by side.
You can see that one is definitely turquoise
and the other one is blue.
But what if I want to make say purple?
I'm gonna start with that blue
and I'm gonna add even more magenta
to the turquoise that I started with
and we'll see if we can get to purple.
And kind of all the different shades in between.
Oh, I'm gonna add more water to this so we can really,
we can really see the colors.
Ooh, that one is a nice kind of a violet color.
If I added even more,
and why don't I just do it?
More magenta to it,
we could make an even more purpley.
Here, I'll swirl it with my pipette.
This is something that you might have at home.
So now, ooh yes.
Ooh, that's a nice purpley color.
What's another color we wanna make?
Oh, let's make green.
What two colors do you think we'll use to make green?
We're gonna start with yellow.
Start with that primary
and what other primary are we gonna add to it?
Oh, let's add just a little bit of the cyan,
yellow and cyan or turquoise.
I'm gonna add it from.
Ooh, now it's sort of a lemon lime color.
Gonna add another, oh yes.
Trying to get to what I like to call Jolly Rancher green.
Ooh, that one is a little bit darker than Jolly Rancher
but you can see it is most definitely green.
You can also mix these colors
and you can get too dark brown or black.
In fact, like the little girl
in the story that we just read,
she wondered if black was a rainbow color.
She said, yes, black was a rainbow color
because it made her feel the rainbow inside of herself.
But in reality, black is really all of the colors
of the rainbow mixed together.
I am going to try and mix up
a bunch of different colors
to try and get as close to black or dark brown as I can.
All right, so I have my list here.
I'm not gonna go through them all.
I'm gonna try for a dark gray or a black
and a dark Brown
and let's see how I can do that.
And by doing that, I'm gonna try
and get to a color that you don't think of
as something in the rainbow,
but it's still a color in nature.
So all right, I'm going to try
mixing all three colors.
And again, I'm going to start with some yellow.
So let's do one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven drops of yellow
and I'm gonna mark it, okay for dark brown.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven yellow
and let me get another pipette.
Oh, I'll use this one here
'cause this one's pretty much cleaned out
and I'm gonna do some magenta.
Now this is gonna go to red at first,
one, two, three, four,
five drops of magenta,
gonna mark that down.
One, two, three, four, five,
and now let's go to
my cyan or my turquoise.
You wanna do this in the kitchen like by the sink
so you don't make as much of a mess as I am.
All right, so now let's go for one,
two drops of the cyan
and let's see where that's gotten us, all right?
So that was one, two drops of the cyan
and let me use my brush again.
I'm gonna clean the brush
and let's mix this up and ooh,
ooh, I'm already kind of getting
to like a grayish green on this one.
That is, that's a very, very dark green, greenish gray.
It's gonna be kind of drippy there.
Think I wanna add maybe another drop of magenta.
Let's try two drops a magenta, one, two.
And I'm gonna mark it
on my little data collection sheet here.
One, two more drops of magenta.
Let's stir it around.
Ooh, ooh, it's already starting to look even more gray.
Yes indeed, we're moving more toward
the dark gray and the black.
But I want it to get to Brown.
So I'm gonna add even more magenta.
I'm just guessing at this point, just trying it out.
One, two more drops of magenta.
I'll mark it on my sheet, one, two.
Now let's see if we're getting.
Wow, I'm not getting the brown,
but I am getting really close to black.
You know, I'm gonna add one more drop of magenta,
mark it on my sheet.
Wow, well, I think I'm gonna stop with this
because we got something pretty close to a dark gray
or a black.
Oh yeah.
Wow.
So black is a rainbow color.
Black has all the colors of the rainbow mixed together.
It's pretty good and if I wanna make black again,
I have the recipe here.
Two drops of cyan, 10 drops of magenta
and seven drops of yellow
gets me to a really nice dark gray or black.
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Time for Poetry Corner.
This poem is called "Colors" by Shel Silverstein
and Shel Silverstein is a pretty famous illustrator
and writer and poet.
He's got some really great books out there.
I can remember "Where the Sidewalk Ends"
and also "A Light in the Attic", but there's lots more.
Should check out some more Shel Silverstein.
So "Colors".
My skin is kind of, sort of brownish,
pinkish, yellowish, white.
My eyes are grayish, bluish, green,
but I'm told they look orange in the night.
My hair is reddish, blondish brown,
but it's silvery when wet.
And all the colors I am inside have not been invented yet.
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