A Science Experiment

Okay, so we can't decide if this is cool or a little gross. We were attempting to grow a salt crystal garden, and the jury is still out on the success of the experiment.

My friend Tanya passed along the instructions and some Mrs. Stewart's Liquid Bluing that we would need to do this little science experiment. Here's how it all started:
 The first day we put some porous materials in the bottom of a dish. Because I can never follow instructions exactly to the "T" I chose both a sponge that we cut up and a couple pieces of charcoal. I think you were supposed to choose 1 base material...Next we covered the base with 2 tablespoons of salt, 2 tablespoons of water, and 2 tablespoons of the Mrs. Stewarts. I had never heard of this cleaning detergent before, but apparently when used in the laundry in makes your whites very white. I have a hard time imagining this as it stained my hands blue. The experiment then sits for a day.

On day two, which I don't have a picture of because it looks exactly the same as above, we added two more tablespoons of salt. Again, let it sit for a day.


 On Day 3, we added two more tablespoons each of water, salt and Mrs. Stewart's, then added drops of food coloring. Up to this point, I hadn't told the girls exactly what we were doing, they knew something was supposed to be growing in the dish, and I wanted to them to guess along the way what was happening so I had not been specific that crystals were maybe going to form.

The instructions say that by day 4 there should be some growth, and if there isn't, add a few tablespoons of household ammonia. We had nothing growing, so I added the ammonia and set it on our patio table, instead of in the house. It stunk! The one thing the girls said throughout the process was that it didn't smell good ~ they were right.


 Finally after sitting outside for a few hours, this was the result.


 It's kind of cool, but I think it looks just as much like a fungus as it does crystals. The pictures look much prettier than it actually looks, the green areas have a very strange mold-ish appearance in person. Rebekah's first response was, "What is all that green?" Alyssa just wanted to know what happened to it.


 Hmmmm...do I see a brain-like formation in there? It was neat and fun to do, and the instructions provide an explanation of how it grows by using words like nuclei, capillary action, and silver iodide cloud...I'm not sure that the girls took all of that away from the experiment, but we definitely score an "A" for effort :-)