This week with the Quarks and Neutrons we had an indoor snowday. We started out by reading Snow by Sam Usher and then we read Stella Queen Of The Snow by Marie Louise Gay. Next we headed up to the kitchen to make icicles. Instead of making our icicles out of ice that would melt we used a borax solution and are growing crystal “icicles”. Once we had our crystals all set to grow we headed into the gym for some penguin relay races. Both teams had to race while holding a footbal between their knees.
And a great explanation of my the crystals form from Scientific American:
“Why do crystals appear as the mixture cools? It has to do with solubility, or the largest amount of something that can be dissolved in something else, such as dissolving the powdered cleaning product, Borax, in water. The solubility of most solids increases with temperature. In other words, more Borax may be dissolved in hot water than cold water. So if a hot, saturated mixture is cooled, there’s more Borax than can be contained by the colder water, and so Borax may fall out of the mixture, forming crystals.”

Snow!