Participating in Science Fair is a requirement for the 2nd grade class of our elementary school.
Griffin had long-decided that he wanted to do his project on crystal growth. Unfortunately growing crystals on their own isn’t much of a project, since there’s no hypothesis there. So he ultimately called out that he wanted to grow crystals in various temperatures to see which will grow faster.
We had some good, dinner-time conversations refining his hypothesis and experiment design, to make sure he was controlling for the right variables.
He grew his crystals in the fridge, room temperature and heating pad. The room temp and hot sample we kept in the downstairs bathroom, because there’s no natural light in that room: this was so that light didn’t become a factor in the experiment.
We had to keep Zoe out of the bathroom too — 1) so she wouldn’t get too curious and want to drink the crystal solution; 2) so that she didn’t decide to play with the sample containers. In revenge, she DID play/break one of the samples AFTER it was done, and thankfully AFTER I had photographed it for the fair poster. Life with pets and kids, man — it’s why you can never have nice stuff.
Oh — in case you’re curious, hot sample grew the fastest.
