Apple Pie Salt Experiment

J5 has been rowing How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World these last two weeks. He's been enjoying all the different places the book takes him and was especially excited to hear about getting salt from salt water. Here are some of the results.

These crystals were left behind after a few days of having salt water evaporate. J5 set right to observing them up close.

E12 and J5 working together on the image. This is a crystal of salt at 60x.

I asked J5 to find a hand lens and he went straight for the microscope. He means business. Also, he's been dying to pull this out and look at stuff like maple "helicopter" seeds, etc. His curiosity knows NO bounds friends. He keeps things busy here at our house. I just have to keep my eye on him so he doesn't take this thing apart to see how it works!

J5 put the crystals right on the stage for observation- this is at 200x which takes practice. When you magnify higher, the field of vision gets smaller which can be frustrating to budding scientists. E12 was there to lend a hand. The nice thing about no ocular lenses is that you can't smash the slide with it on high power! A sometimes hidden danger when using a traditional light microscope.

One of the cool features of the Intel QX3 is that you can take it out of its base and use it like a scope on a rope!

Check out the image when you view them all in the bowl at 60x!

He was only too happy to begin drawing the shapes he observed. Then he dictated to me the method he used in evaporating the water to see the salt crystals.

J5 LOVES his science. We have some other images on one of the school computers we'll share with you soon. I just need to elect E12 to put them on our server so I can access them from laptop central! The Intel QX3 digital microscope we have can take stills and video of the object you are viewing. You can be sure J5 was taking snapshots at every magnification!

He is looking forward to making an apple pie in the next day or so. Also, I need to share the finished product of the paper he's working on in the above photo. As always, stay tuned!