How to make invisible ink at home?

If you ever thought about the endless possibilities of secret correspondence with your friends, you will probably be interested in how to make invisible ink. At home, you can write a secret message in several ways. All the methods presented below are absolutely safe and can be used freely in children's games about spies and scouts.

The simplest recipe

Perhaps in adventure books or children's detectives you have already mentioned that secret lemon juice can be used as a secret agent for spy messages. Incredibly, but the fact: to learn from your own experience how to make invisible ink, you do not need to own specific tools or technically complex equipment. To conduct an exciting experiment you will need materials and items that can be found in any household, namely:

• Half a lemon;
• water;
• a spoon;
• a bowl;
• Cotton swab;
• White paper;
• lamp.

Lemon magic

Once you have collected all the necessary items, you can start the first experience. Subsequently, you can proudly show your friends how to make invisible ink at home without any preliminary preparation. So:

• Squeeze a little lemon juice into a bowl and add a few drops of plain water.
• Mix the juice and water using a spoon.
• Dip the cotton swab in the mixture and write your message on white paper.
• Wait until the juice dries and becomes completely invisible.
• When you are ready to read or demonstrate your secret message, heat the paper by holding it closer to the light bulb on.

How it works

Lemon juice is an organic substance that oxidizes and becomes brown when heated. The juice is diluted with water so that when the resulting mixture is applied to paper, the letters and symbols practically disappear from the surface. No one will even guess that there is something written on the leaf, until you heat up the message. Other substances work on the same principle - for example, orange juice, honey, milk, onion juice, vinegar and wine. If you are interested in how to make invisible ink at home in other ways, try to conduct chemical experiments or look at spy liquids under ultraviolet radiation.

Experiments with soda

A quick chemical experiment can be organized in just a few minutes, if you have ordinary baking soda at your fingertips. Moreover, science knows at least two ways of making an invisible ink from this inexpensive powder. Try the following:

• Mix baking soda with water in equal proportions.
• Using a cotton swab, toothpick or brush for drawing, write a message on white paper, applying a solution of baking soda as ink.
• Wait for the inscription to dry.
• The first way to read the secret message is to heat the paper - for example, under a light bulb, as in the case of lemon juice. The stitches will turn brown.
• The second way is much more interesting. To translate it into life paint all the paper with the juice of black grapes. The message will appear in the form of letters of contrasting color.

Tips & Tricks

If you have already figured out how to make an invisible ink, note:

• If you prefer heating as a way to develop a message, make sure that the paper does not ignite - do not use halogen bulbs.
• Baking soda and grape juice interact with each other in an acid-base reaction, producing changes in the color of words and letters.
• The solution can be made weaker by adding one part of baking soda to two parts of water. This will not affect the final effect.
• If you want to make the change of colors more vivid and obvious, take the grape concentrate instead of the usual juice.

other methods

Those who are interested in how to make invisible ink will probably like the idea of using a variety of different substances as the main material for secret correspondence. Indeed: spyware and reconnaissance correspond to many substances, but secret agents need to remember, with the help of which reagents are manifested each of them. If you forgot the ideal reagent, do not despair: most of the substances listed below can be expressed with acid. So, just paint the secret paper with lemon juice. Some messages appear when heated, so if you already know how to make invisible ink and write a magic letter with them, keep a source of heat with you.

For an experiment with secret correspondence, the following are ideally suited:

• Phenolphthalein (manifested by soda);
• Vinegar or diluted acetic acid (you can see the message by dipping it in a decoction of red cabbage);
• Table salt (there is enough silver nitrate for development);
• Copper sulfate (sodium iodide or ammonium hydroxide will be needed ) ;
• Ferrous sulfate (manifested by soda);
• Corn or potato starch (for reading I need a solution of iodine).

Now you know a lot about how to make invisible ink - you can go to the scouting!