Growing Crystals

In this Science project, we just added some salt to water and watched the change over a month.
Salt is a type of Crystal.  The same type of reaction occurs with other types of crystals if you use crystal powder made up of ground up crystal. When we added the salt to the water, it made what scientists call a "solution".  This starts a process called "nucleation" which means the process where a small number of molecules become arranged in a pattern of a crystal.

It is amazing how the crystals kept on growing and even went up the side of the jar and down the outside.  It almost seemed like they were alive and trying to escape from the jar, but what really happens is the molecules continue to re-organize themselves into a crystal which appears to grow.  Scientists also call this "Self-organization".

How Butterflies Come To Be

Butterflies are a beautiful creature, but did you know they start off as caterpillars.  Seeing a caterpillar transform into a butterfly is really cool and interesting.  Let me tell you about it.

We started with a container of 12 new caterpillars that my mom got.  Watch this video to see the caterpillars.



After 6 days of having the Caterpillars they went to the top of their container and started to spin a cocoon around themselves.  Sometimes a cocoon also is called a Chrysalis.  

This video shows the caterpillars making cocoons in time-lapse photography.

After all the caterpillars were in their cocoon we moved them into the Butterfly Habitat.

The caterpillars were in the cocoon for about 7 days.  During that time they turned into butterflies through a process called metamorphosis.  Metamorphosis is an example of the miracle of life where these caterpillars transform into beautiful butterflies.  The following video shows the butterflies coming out of the cocoon in time-lapse photography.


The butterflies that came out are beautiful.  These butterflies are called Painted Ladies.  We put a small container of sugar water in the Habitat for the new butterflies to eat.
In this video I explained what I learned.

Finally, it was time to release our pet butterflies.