💎 Salt and sugar crystals: the whole packet

💎 Salt and sugar crystals · 4th–8th grade · 5 days of testing · free · 30 minutes a sitting

My days, if the fair is 14 days away

Count back from your fair day and write in each date. Fewer days than this? The jobs share days, in this order; nothing is skipped.

Dates from my teacher

• My question is due
• Testing starts
• My results table and graph are due
• My board is due

In this packet

1. 🗓️ My project plan
2. 💭 My hypothesis
3. 🧺 Change, measure, keep the same
4. 🪜 My steps
5. 📊 My results
6. 📓 My logbook
7. ✅ My conclusion
8. ✂️ Board titles to cut out
9. 🏅 The judge's questions and my certificate

If I change what is dissolved in the water, then how long the longest crystal is after five days will ________________, because _____________________________________________

What I think will happen, in my own words:

3 levels × 3 tries at each = 9 tries in all. If anything you keep the same changes, you won't know which change made the difference.

What I need

• 🧂 Salt: about 1 cup
• 🍬 Sugar: about 4 cups
• ♨️ Hot water from the tap or kettle, for a grown-up to pour: 1 cup for each jar
• 🫙 A clear jar or tall glass: 9 clear jars, three for each
• 🧵 String or yarn
• ✏️ A pencil: 9
• 🖇️ Paper clips: 9
• 🥛 A measuring cup
• 🥄 A spoon
• 📏 A ruler

Be safe: 🔥 Hot · 👶 Small parts · 🚫 Test food is not for eating

1. Grown-up: A grown-up pours one cup of hot water into each of the nine jars.
2. Grown-up: A grown-up stirs salt into three jars, a spoon at a time, until no more disappears.
3. Grown-up: A grown-up stirs sugar into three more the same way. The last three are just water.
4. Tie a string to each pencil, hang a paper clip on the end, and lay the pencils across the jars.
5. Leave the jars on a quiet shelf where nobody will bump them.
6. Every day for five days, measure the longest crystal on each string.
7. Write each day's number in your logbook, and draw what you see.
8. On day five, put the final lengths in your results table.
9. Draw a line graph: days along the bottom, crystal length up the side.

Write each number in your results table the moment you measure it.

I changed: Dissolved in the jar   I measured: how long the longest crystal is after five days (mm)

MY GRAPH (a line graph: dissolved in the jar along the bottom, mm up the side)

What I noticed: ______________________________________________

Write something every day you work on it, even the days you only gather things. More days? The three-page logbook prints from peabody.kids/science-fair/templates/logbook.

My hypothesis was ☐ right ☐ partly right ☐ not right.

I know because my numbers show:

What surprised me, or what might have gone wrong (7th and up):

Next time I would test:

Idea: Change a second thing: grow salt crystals in a warm spot and a cool spot, and graph each day's length for both.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: which grows crystals faster: salt or sugar?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing what is dissolved in the water would change how long the longest crystal is after five days, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed what is dissolved in the water (Salt, Sugar, Nothing (just water)) and measured how long the longest crystal is after five days in mm.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept the same amount of hot water and the same kind of string the same, so only what is dissolved in the water was different.
5. How many times did you test it? Say something like: 3 times at each of my 3 levels, and I found the middle number.
6. What did you find out? Show me in your numbers. Say something like: Look at my table: Salt and Nothing (just water) gave different numbers, and here's the pattern.
7. Was your hypothesis right? How do you know? Say something like: My numbers show whether I was right, partly right or not, and I can show you where.
8. Did anything go wrong, or surprise you? Say something like: One try was odd, so I did it again and wrote it in my logbook.
9. If you did it again, what would you change or test next? Say something like: I'd change a second thing: grow salt crystals in a warm spot and a cool spot, and graph each day's length for both.