Snow Crystals!

Just for fun, I thought it was time to add a little science experiment into our homeschool day. We have been doing experiments every now and then as we go through our regular homeschool science curriculum (we are currently using Apologias Exploring Creation with Astronomy) but I just wanted to do something for fun. After all--it's January, Christmas is over, Spring Break is still a ways away, so when I saw this idea on-line I knew it was a great "boredom buster".

It is turning out to be a very easy experiment, and my daughter is already making plans to do several more. All you do is pour boiling water into a container, disolve Borax into your water (we found our Borax at Walmart--it was pretty cheap, and only came in a HUGE container, so I think we have enough to make a million snowflakes now!), add a drop of food coloring if you want to, and hang your shape made out of pipe cleaner. We were shocked at how fast the crystals started to grow. This picture was taken only 30 minutes after we started the experiment. I'm not sure how large the crystals will grow. The instructions I read said to leave it overnight, so we will see what it looks like in the morning. So we'll see how much bigger they grow. I can say we have already had fun even if they don't grow any larger than this.

If you are interested in doing this experiment yourself, the ratio is 3 Tablespoons of Borax to each 1 cup of boiling water--so this pint container took 6 Tablespoons of Borax. And just boil water all by itself, then stir the Borax into it. A pencil is a great way to suspend your snowflakes--I just took a piece of tape, put it around one arm of our snowflake and the other end around the pencil. According to what I read, you are supposed to be able to hang these snowflakes around in your windows after they are dry. I'll see how fragile they are, and if the crystals hang on pretty tight, we'll try that!

Have fun!