Good photography isn’t always about setting up a controlled situation with the perfect lighting and the perfect hair and the perfect outfit. Most of the time it’s about what is going on in our lives on a quiet afternoon with our family. Most of the time, the lighting isn’t perfect and the kids are a mess or the perfect shirt is in the dirty clothes hamper and the one you have on has a hole in it and stain dead center. Most of the time, the best pictures are the ones that just happen. So, every once in a while, I’m going to post some of those so everyone can see that good photography is more about expression and moments and about what we do everyday, than about trying to making things be perfect.

To beat the summer boredom we decided to do a simple science project and grow some crystals out of table salt. If you want to try it with your own kids the instructions are below! Good Luck.

In this picture there are two glasses with liquid. We tried to do salt in one and sugar in the other one. The sugar one (on the right) never did yield any crystals.

Make Your Own Crystals!

Things You’ll Need

1 cup boiling water

about 1/2 cup salt

1 pencil

cotton string

1 spoon

1 paper clip (we used a safety pin)

paper towel

1 jar (we used glass vases)

food coloring (optional)

Directions:

Tie one end of the string to the pencil and the other end to the paper clip. Make the string just long enough so that when the pencil is sitting on top of the jar, the paper clip barely touches the bottom of the jar. Set aside.

Boil 1 cup of water and pour it into the jar. Start adding salt ONE teaspoon at a time. Stir each teaspoon until fully dissolved. Be patient…if you stir in all the salt at once, your crystals won’t work. Eventually you’ll find that the salt won’t dissolve anymore, when this happens, stop putting in more salt. If you want to add food coloring, now is the time. A few drops should do it. We only had blue but a combination of colors may be fun.

Lower the paper clip into the jar and cover the jar with a paper towel so dust won’t get in. Now, wait and see what happens. In about 24 hours you should see crystals starting to grow on the string. Ours is a week out and still growing.