Eli Made Crystals!

This Geology unit has been so fun!


Elijah made two types of crystals for this one. He made salt and alum crystals. We set everything up that first day.








We waited about two days...


Salt:



Alum:



And then a week or more went by and we decided it was done.


Salt:



Alum:



Alum made the biggest crystals of the two.





Then it was time for inspection this evening.





They were getting the microscope out when I came to blog our fun. And I can hear OOOOOO's and AHHHHHH's coming from the kitchen. And just now Eli ran up to me to show me a drawing he has done of the structure of both. HA HA HA! I love these boys!


We learned through this that minerals will often form crystals. And that crystals are smooth, flat surfaces that meet in sharp edges and corners. We even learned of gems.


This was so good for Eli he is always picking up rocks or buying them or reading about them. :) Glad we did this one.

Make your own compass!

This was pretty cool you guys!


First Elijah and I prepared the base from a styrofoam cup. We just cut the bottom off of one. Be sure to even it out.





You want to end up with your hand sewing needle just barely hanging off both sides of the styrofoam cup.





Use your bar magnet, it doesn't matter which end, and rub the one end of the magnet in one direction only on the pointy side of your needle. Eli did this for some time. I guess he liked it.





Use just a little dot of glue to secure you needle on your foam. Set the compass you made into the water of a shallow bowl.





Now, watch it turn and spin until it stops.





Your needle should now point in a north-south direction!!!! How fun is this!!??





This was so neat to use after we read about earth being a magnet with two ends or poles. :) Enjoy this one yourself. Let us know if you try it.

Measuring the Earth

We moved on to Geology. Elijah is in heaven because it is rocks and minerals and all that "stuff" he loves so.


He used an apple to measure a sphere.


He measured the center of the apple with a string and found it was 10 inches.









Then he cut the apple through its equator and measured again with string for 3 inches.











We learned that the earth would need a string that was 25,000 miles long for the equator to be measured and it gave us a good idea what the earth would be if we cut it in half for the diameter. This experiment made a nice snack. :)