Skittles diffusion

Simply fill a small white plate with water (a few millimetres deep) and place a selection of Skittles or M&Ms around the edge. Keep it very still and watch as the colours travel across the plate. What do you think will happen when the colours meet? You might expect them to mix but you’ll probably find that you get perfectly neat lines instead! This is because the sugar and colouring that is dissolving from the surface of the sweet is spreading out by a process called diffusion. The sugar will move from where there is lots of sugar to places where there is less. When it meets more colour and sugar coming the other way, there’s no point going any further!