Cabbage Juice, Anyone?

Next week's science at our house involves using purple cabbage juice to test the pH of certain substances. There are different suggestions out there of how to get purple cabbage juice, and even substitution ideas. Here's a quick and easy way we did it. (And, though it may be suggested that red onions work too... I found that no, in fact, they don't, and I'm still burning candles to get rid of the boiled red onion smell. ;)

First I started water boiling in a kettle on the stove. While it was heating, I chopped cabbage. We only need two cups of the solution, so I just used half a head of cabbage.

I chopped it into small pieces.

I put it into a eight cup bowl.

Once the water was boiling, I poured it over the cabbage, just enough to cover it.


This is what it looked like after about 15 minutes.

It didn't get much darker, but this is how it ended up 30 or so minutes later.


I then strained it into a jar, and ended up with more than I thought so I needed two jars! Once site suggested pouring vinegar over the leftover cabbage and using it as a relish. Um, we didn't do that, but if it sounds good to you... go for it! I read said to store it cold, so it's now in our garage refridgerator awaiting our science experiments next week!

The procedures we will be doing are in our BJU Science 6 book, but here are some sites which offer fun ways to test acidity with cabbage juice:

Zoom Activities: Cabbage Juice Indicator

Children's Museum (Connecticut)

Coal Education

Cabbage Patch Chemistry

Suzy's World (exceptionally clear explanations)

We'll see how it turns out. It should be "pHun!"