First science fair and stuff

Sadly, this week was a lot rougher than last week. I could tell Monday and Tuesday that my body was fighting something, so I tried to take it easy and get lots of vitamins. It seemed to do the trick, because I never did come down with the sore throat that was threatening to take over. But I didn't exercise more than 2 days, and I didn't get a ton done, and I forgot to take my aminos for a couple days. So once I physically felt better, my mental state pooped out. Steve took care of me yesterday, though, and we got to have dinner with my side of the family last night, so I'm feeling much renewed today.

I did manage to help Emilia start her science fair project. It was probably the worst thing I've done in six months. She wanted to compare different ways of growing crystals, and at first she wanted to do a consumer report and try out different kits to see which ones worked the best. But looking online, they cost anywhere from $10 to $50 each and there was no way I was spending that kind of money on a 4th grade science fair. So she decided to try different DIY methods instead, and narrowed it down to making rock candy and trying different methods. Had I known what an ordeal it was going to be, I might have paid the money for the consumer report!

First, we decided to use distilled water, because one of the websites said that it would keep a film from forming on the top of the solution (which would make it harder for the water to evaporate). So I had to go to the store and buy some. Then we were going to use two different kinds of sugar as one of the studies. So we boiled two pots of water and started adding sugar. Most of the websites said to use a 1:3 ratio. 3 cups sugar to 1 cup water, so it would be highly saturated. Since we also wanted to study Light/warm vs. dark/cold and plain skewer vs. sugar-dipped skewer, we needed 4 cups of water per kind of sugar, which meant 12 cups of sugar per pot. That's a lot of sugar. Three bags of brown sugar to be exact. After adding 3 cups, I could no longer see the bottom of the pot and had no idea if the sugar was still being dissolved. But the white sugar seemed to be dissolving, so we kept going. This is what the brown sugar pot looked like after. 12 cups of sugar were added:

So in other words, I had brown bubbly sludge. About five minutes after taking each of them off the stove--not even enough time to prepare the jars we were going to pour the solution in, both mixtures had become nearly solid. Since the brown sugar was so thick and dark, there was no way we were going to be able to keep an eye on the crystal formation, so I wrote it off as a nice try that we'd have to toss.

The white sugar solution was translucent, but still hard. So we put it back on the stove and added water until we had a 1:2 solution. This time, it stayed liquid, we added food coloring, rolled 1/2 the sticks in sugar and stuck 2 in per jar.

Since we wanted to study light vs. dark, Emilia decided the closet under the stairs would be the best place to put two of the jars. But the solution was still hot. It was after 9 by that point, and I was still trying to mend (this was Tuesday), so I was really tired, and I didn't want to do the project for Emilia, so I told her to get a hot pad and take them down herself. Bad idea. She dropped one of the jars half-way down, spilling purple syrup all over my carpeted stairs and the rug near the front door. I didn't save myself any work by having her do it. Sheesh.

After scrubbing carpet, wood floor, tile floor, moving and washing a rug and carrying the other jar downstairs, I declared the project done and fell asleep on the couch while trying to brainstorm worldbuilding stuff for my next attempt at writing a book.

Here is what the jars with the sticks that were in the light looked like:

When I was talking to my parents the next day, I was telling them about the brown sludge when I remembered that people used to make candy by pouring hot syrup on the snow. Miraculously, we had snow. So I thought, why not try that out with the brown sludge?

Our first attempt just made brown-colored snow. It looked super appetizing. (Not.)

So, in looking up recipes, I decided to add a little bit of honey, and then measure the temperature so it got to the hard ball stage.  We also decided to pack the snow into bread pans so it was compact (harder for the hot syrup to to melt through). It worked. And it was REALLY good. I loved it. Mira and Cecily thought it was disgusting. Emilia thought it was edible enough to have a few pieces. :) But everybody had fun taking turns pouring.

Mira is holding a piece she made.

Steve also had game night this week, I helped Julia--I've been keeping it to an hour lately and it seems a lot less tedious--and I went visiting teaching. Cecily has been drawing a lot lately. This first one she said was a 9-armed squid (that was before she drew 16 arms) who doesn't like other sea creatures. But he likes humans, so he's nice to them (hence the smile).