Sodium Acetate Towers
Autopause
Materials
2 Round Petri Dishes
4 Bottles of Sodium Acetate with Water
1 Tube of Sodium Acetate Crystals
1 Reusable Heat Pack
Instructions
STEP 1
Reach into your kit & pull out the bag that says Experiment 15. Grab out the bag with the Petri dishes and keep everything else in the bag for now.
STEP 2
Take out the Petri dishes but be sure to keep them closed. Move the white mat to the side, we don’t need it for this experiment.
STEP 3
Next, take out the four little bottles. They contain sodium acetate in water. Pick out two bottles of liquid and place them in front of you. Move the rest of the bottles that are solid to the side.
STEP 4
Take the lid off of one of the Petri dishes and pour one of the bottles of liquid into it. Then put the lid back on the Petri dish.
STEP 5
Take your tube of Sodium Acetate Crystals and gently open it. Grab a pinch of crystals and drop them into the center of the liquid in the dish.
STEP 6
Watch as the crystals start to grow and begin to turn all of the liquid into a solid.
STEP 7
Next grab another bottle of liquid and gently uncap. Slowly pour the liquid on top of the solid crystals to grow them even more.
STEP 8
If you have an extra bottle of liquid, that’s a bonus and you can use it to continue building your crystal tower.
STEP 9
You have an extra petri dish so if you have another bottle of liquid you can do it again. Remember, if your bottles are solid, ask an adult to boil them in water for about 10 minutes to turn them back into a liquid.
STEP 10
Next, pull out the heat pack from your bag and with two fingers flex the metal tab to release the crystallization reaction.
STEP 11
This heat pack reaction can be done over and over again. Just ask an adult to boil it for 10 minutes. Then, once it’s cooled down, you can do it again.
How It Works
In this experiment, we dissolved a special kind of salt called Sodium Acetate into water. Unlike other salts and sugars, which only allow you to add so much before you can't dissolve anymore, Sodium Acetate can continue to dissolve as it is heated. Once the liquid is cooled, it can only react if there is a seed crystal.
Since this liquid is so sensitive to dust and other particles, it's possible that your reaction happened differently than Dr. Jeff's, and that's okay too. Any kind of dust or seed crystal could set it off, and that's what is so neat about it.
Since this liquid is so sensitive to dust and other particles, it's possible that your reaction happened differently than Dr. Jeff's, and that's okay too. Any kind of dust or seed crystal could set it off, and that's what is so neat about it.
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