How do they make dye?

Answer

Dear Simon,

That is indeed a good question, which is not so easy to answer. I suppose you have an idea what a dye actually does, namely it gives a specific color to something. That’s because the dye reflects that particular color when light hits it. In the past, until 250 years ago, dyes were only obtained from nature, for example from plants, or from animals (snails or small spiders) or by grinding colorful rocks and mixing them with oil. About 200 years ago, people learned to understand the composition and structure of substances better and better, in other words, the science of chemistry or chemistry was born. Chemistry teaches that all substances are made up of simple building blocks that can be put together like Lego blocks. If you then look at the structure of natural dyes, you can try to make comparable structures with those simple building blocks. And that is what has happened over the last 100 years, resulting in a very wide range of different dyes in all possible colours. Now to really understand how dyes are made you have to learn a little bit of chemistry and if you are interested in that you should try to get into it more. Now making your own dye from products from nature is not that difficult and you can make things change color. If your mom prepares red cabbage or beetroot again, you should ask if you can get a little of the cooking liquid. A nice experiment is to add a little vinegar there, see what happens and then add a little soda water, you will see that you can change the colors that way. That’s doing a little chemistry.

Regards