The Secret Rainbow Inside Crayons

Max Velocity

Hey there, Explorers! Welcome back to Season 2 of Curious Sparks. Oh man, I can't tell you how awesome it feels to have you all back for another round of adventures. I hope you got your imaginations fired up and your coloring hands ready, because today we're cracking open the secret behind the rainbow that lives inside every crayon. I mean, if you think back to our earlier episode all about the Crayola story—remember how those inventors turned basic stuff into a universe of colors? Well, today we’re diving even deeper behind the scenes.

Max Velocity

So, have you ever wondered where those wild reds, electrifying blues, and sunny yellows actually come from? No, crayons don’t just fall from the sky in rainbow colors—although that would be pretty cool. Turns out, a lot of those brilliant colors come from, like... rocks! For real. For red shades, crayon makers actually use iron oxide, which is the same rusty mineral that can turn playground dirt a kind of reddish-orange. And ultramarine, that deep mega-blue? That’s made from—you guessed it—lapis lazuli, a special blue rock. Some browns and tans get their start from clay. It’s like the Earth itself is the secret artist mixing up all those shades.

Max Velocity

Now, here’s the sciencey bit—I’ll keep it quick, I promise! What makes a color a color? It all comes down to something called pigments. These are tiny pieces, sometimes from rocks, sometimes from plants, that soak up certain kinds of light and bounce others back into our eyes. That’s what makes your crayon look bold and bright on paper. In crayon factories, they blend these colors right into melted wax so you get those smooth, colorful sticks in your box.

Max Velocity

Oh! That totally reminds me—I gotta tell you this story. In Inventon, I run this little workshop where kids come to invent wild stuff. Last spring, we tried making our own ‘nature crayons’. We mashed up flower petals for purple, grated sidewalk chalk for white, and even tried mixing in some green grass. It wasn’t exactly factory-perfect—our purple kind of looked more like... muddy blue, if I’m honest—but it was so much fun seeing what colors we could create from what was around us. And hey, being messy is half the fun, right?

Max Velocity

So, you’ve got these awesome base colors from nature and science... but here’s where the real magic happens: mixing! Chemists who work in crayon labs are basically like super-artists. They take, say, blue and green, and—bam!—turquoise. Or they’ll add a pinch of red to heaps of white wax to make peach. It’s this gigantic experiment, sometimes with a wild result.

Max Velocity

Let’s talk about crayon names for a sec—because honestly, half the fun is reading them, right? There’s this great story from Crayola about how ‘Macaroni and Cheese’ got its name. Picture this: someone in the factory was hungry, probably thinking about lunch, and noticed a new orangey-yellow color looked just like cheesy noodles. So they called it ‘Macaroni and Cheese’, and everyone just went with it! Sometimes they even let kids vote on new names, which... I dunno, that’s a pretty big responsibility, if you ask me.

Max Velocity

But not every color is easy to create. For example, true purple—like, the perfect purple that isn’t too blue or too red—that’s actually really tricky! Crayon makers have to mess around with just the right mix. Too much blue, it’s navy. Too much red, it’s magenta. And don’t get me started on metallics and neons; those need special ingredients so they’re bright and shiny—not just regular pigments. So, next time you see a rare color in your box, remember, someone probably spent ages tinkering to make it look that cool.

Max Velocity

Now, if you flip over your crayon box, you might spot some wild names like ‘Sakura Pink’ or ‘Jungle Green’. These aren’t just made up—well, mostly—they’re inspired by different places around the world! ‘Sakura Pink’ is named after cherry blossoms in Japan, which are really this dreamy shade of pink. And ‘Jungle Green’, that’s all about the deep, leafy forests you’d find near the Amazon river. So, crayons become this adventure in a box, letting you travel the globe, color by color.

Max Velocity

And here’s something cool: the way crayons are colored is always changing. New tech means you can get eco-friendly crayons—some even use plant-based pigments so they’re better for the Earth. There’s stuff like digital color matching too, so factories can create pretty much any shade you dream up. It reminds me of our community workshop project last fall. The challenge? Make a huge crayon mural, but only use colors we could get from local plants. So we boiled onion skins for yellow, beet juice for red—our hands looked like tie-dye for a week! It wasn’t just about art, it was about exploring how crayon color ideas can come from everywhere—not just the store shelf.

Max Velocity

Colors are always evolving, just like our curiosity. Who knows? The color in your next crayon could be inspired by something in your own backyard, or maybe even something you invent! That’s it for today’s colorful adventure, Explorers. Thanks for joining me, and don’t forget—you’ve always got a rainbow of possibilities in your hands. I can’t wait to see what we’ll discover together in our next episode. Keep sparking that curiosity!