Ghost Science – part 1

Ghost Science sounds like a lot of fun, doesn’t it? It was.

Miss J received a neat kit for her birthday titled Ghost Science. There were two experiments included, which will be shared in two different posts so I can share plenty of pictures. The package came with plenty of materials to do the experiments several times.

The first one was Ghost Eggs. For this experiment, we used ghost eggs (water marbles). They sat in water for several hours, getting checked by the girls quite often to see how much they had expanded. As they expanded, they seemed to disappear in the water. We took a look at why that was happening and read about what caused it. Miss J played around a bit with different light angles to see what happened. She also noticed how the light affected it as the day went on and as the marbles grew in size.

After they had sat in the water for quite a while, we placed some of them in a different glass bowl and added a few drops of a liquid that came with them. This liquid caused them to glow when a black light was applied. (It came with a little keychain sized blacklight.) We took the bowl into a dark room and Miss J – and sisters – experimented with how they could apply the blacklight to see the “ghost eggs” better, to make them disappear, and more. They had quite a bit of fun with the blacklight and the glowing eggs.

We kept the ghost eggs in a bowl with water for a while and each day the girls would play with them a little bit – seeing how they squished, how they bounced, if they would take pressure and how much, could you juggle them, etc. Something new every time. Plus, they just felt interesting to move around in your hands and to hold.

After a while, we drained them and placed them in a shallow dish to see how long it would take for them to dry out. Turns out – a very long time. They took about three weeks to dry out, back down to their original teensy-tinsy size.

After they had completely dried out, we sacked them up and rehydrated (again) three of them to see if they would stand up to being wet. Turns out, not so much. They were much more fragile the second time we put them in water. They did get just as big but they broke very easily. In fact, one of them broke just in the growth process.

The ghost eggs were lots of fun and the experimentation and observation was fun, too. Definitely worth the time and having them sit on the counter for so long.

Blessings,
At Home.