Science Expo

Evelyn participated in her elementary school's 2nd Annual Science Expo this evening. Well, she has actually been working on this project for about a month, but tonight was the culmination of all of her hard work.

Evelyn wanted to do a project on crystals, which was fine. However, she needed a question and hypothesis, which made things a little difficult. Thanks to Troy and me brainstorming questions to test, we suggested Evelyn try growing salt crystals in warm and cold temperatures - Evelyn liked the idea, and we were off. Her hypothesis? The cold crystals would grow faster.

In the small plate below, is a mixture of 3 tablespoons ammonia, 3 tablespoons Mrs. Stewart's liquid bluing and 1 tablespoon table salt. Put a paper tube in the middle of the concoction, put one set of the experiment inside, put the other set of the experiment outside (the garage)...and let the observations begin.
After 48 hours, here is what the indoor experiment looked like:
And here is what the outdoor experiment looked like after 48 hours:
Needless to say, the salt crystals in the warmer temperatures grew much faster than the salt crystals out in the garage (which was about 45 degrees, on average). Since the experiment was fragile, we couldn't bring the actual crystals to school. Instead we took pictures and mounted them to Evelyn's display. Even though Evelyn's hypothesis was wrong, she had a lot of fun observing three rounds of indoor/outdoor salt crystals, as well as putting the data on a table and a double-line graph. We're proud of our little scientist!