Crystal Garden

My Teacher, Mrs.M, has given us a project to do. It is called Crystal Garden. In this project we have to make a garden of all abiotic (non living) objects such as rocks, cotton balls, sticks, ect. With this garden we are going to make and we are going to grow crystals on them! Our teacher is making the solution for them. Some crystals are to be made out of sugar, some of salt, and other things.

For my garden I need:
1. clay (could not find regular clay so used the clay that they use for windows)
2. paint (to pain the clay to look like grass)
3. small stick

4. cotton balls (not pads)5. small stones (ones that are used in fish tanks)

My garden is based on the image below. Although I did do a few things differently, I did only trees, and no flowers. And you can also see the path leading down I made the whole path visible. We have to take this to class tomorrow and I also have to finish making my map! I will keep posting on any changes and will also post on how the crystals grow. Thanks for stopping by! Have a nice day.

Day 1


Today I finished adding the solutions to my garden and I also finished my map here is a quick snapshot of it. I did not notice any new observations except for the fact that a little bit of crystals grew, but they did not spread around the whole cotton ball.
Day 2

After seeing my garden, nothing new happened, when I look at it with a magnifying glass I see a little bit of improvement, but not that much and it is a little bit of a disappointment but hopefully they will grow!!!!!


Day 3

I just saw my garden........DISAPPOINTMENT, nothing, nothing at all has changed, I think that I have run out of solution, but according to the textbook the crystals should still continue to grow so I'm keeping my fingers crossed!!!


After 2 weeks of growing the crystals it was an utter fail nothing new grew! What the best solution was the the borax solution and the worst was the sugar solution. The easiest to grow was the borax and the slowest and most difficult were the sugar solution. What I think you need for the crystals to grow better than mine are leave them in a solution or keep adding a few drops every day. I know because the people who left it into a solution the crystal grew better, no one tried adding a few drops everyday, that is my prediction that it will grow better. This was my last blog post on the crystals if you deiced to do this project either take my suggestions or try another way to grow crystals. :D :) :P (:

Dynamic Earth

Plate Tectonics and Volcanoes
Plate tectonics are dramatically changing our Earth slowly by moving. Tectonic plates slide past each other, crash, move away from each other and that moves places. Earths plates are also growing and spreading apart from each other. Also volcanoes come from the inner earth and the is magma there and that is what comes out of the volcano and becomes lava, the magma seeps out the volcano before it erupts and when the magma goes out it becomes lava and when the lava cools, it hardens. There is something called the unreachable frontier and it is the worlds deepest drill hole and it is 12.3 kilometers (7.6 miles) deep! It is beneath Russia's Kola peninsula. There is more than 99% of the distance to Earths center still left! You may wonder about how we can learn so much about the inner Earth when we can not access it, well volcanoes help us to and we predict what the core is because things such as volcanoes give us evidence but we do not know for sure what it is. We can also learn about the inner Earth with special types of rocks that are called peridotites, they come from the upper mantle. Garnet can take a lot of pressure. Also partially the reason some magma is formed is the melting of Garnets. Diamonds are like a reminder to people of Earths incredible temperature and pressure within our planet. The high pressure is found at depths like 150 km (90 miles) to create a diamonds hard and tight structure and that makes it the hardest material known.We find diamonds beneath cartons which are the oldest parts of continents. Meteorites are formed of the solar systems original dust and that provides clues to Earths core. Earth has a magnetic field with two main poles. These poles tell us about the inner Earth. The rotation of our Planet causes molten iron-nickle in its outer core to circulate creating electric currents and a magnetic field.

Earth's poles are not stable they move over the Earths surface. Since the year 1945 they have moved over 12 k,m per year. Also about every 500,000 years Earths magnetic fields get much weaker, vanishes, then reapers with North and South pole reversed. The Inner core of the Earth is very hot and what causes the tectonic plates to move is when the inner heat escapes to the cold outer space. In Earths first 100 million years huge and even larger particles in the solar system collided and stuck together creating a lot of tremendous amounts of heat. Lets say that the Earth was an apple, we live on the crust or the skin of the apple, well Earths crust is about as thin as the skin of an apple, relative to its size. The Earths crust is made up of two types of rock, basalt, the oceanic crust is mostly basalt, and Granite, the continental crust is mostly Granite. The mantle is about 84% of Earths volume. The Core is about 15% of Earths volume and is iron-nickle and the core size of Mars.

Gems and Minerals
Gems are built off of heat, pressure, and fluid. There is a hope diamond and has existed for a billion years since it was formed deep within the Earth. Minerals are used more than just for pretty display pieces, they have other uses. They are also the building blocks of the whole universe! They make up the Earth, the moon, the sun, and the rest of the universe.
Maybe you noticed and maybe you didn't but Earths history is written on pages of stone. You use minerals more than you could imagine! The modern and new civilization relies a lot on minerals.

Rocks and Mining
Rocks can melt just like ice, but the different is that all ice melts at the same temperature and all rocks melt at different temperatures. In a way it is like a race for magma, will it erupt at the surface or will it crystallize and cool below the surface? Two different types of igneous rock come out depending on which one happens. Almost all of the metals that we like and value are spread around in the rocks in Earths crust.

What I learned this Week

This week in school I have learned about the layers of the Earth, Earths crust, and Earths structure. What the layers of Earth are the Crust, which is thin cool and hard rock, then there is the Mantle and it is gooey like hot tart and is at 1,200°C, and then goes the outer core and is made out of mixed metals, and then goes the inner core at 1,500°C and is made of only Iron (Fe). I got this from Bill Nye's video, but other sites vary their temperature and they are all very similar and different to the Bill Nye video. Also I learned that every year American the tectonic plates move about 1 inch every year!!!!!!!
What I would like to learn more about how rocks shape our Earths surface and other theories to to big bang. Also I know that every line on a rock shows the history and how different types of lines are formed. The rock cycle also interests me. I think that studying rocks is the most interesting because then you get to find out what country which rocks come from and how they are formed.

Lab Reflections

I have done two lab reports, cooling races and making water wetter. I have done them very well I got a 5/6 on the cooling races lab and a 6/6 on the making water wetter lab! I did not get a 6/6 fro the cooling races lab because there were a few details left out in my answers. Also the making water wetter lab was almost perfect the only thing that I did was not make my further inquiry with enough detail. I also think that if I did the cooling races lab that I would have liked to be more accurate in my measures and that I should have been more on topic with my partner. In the future for the next labs that we do I will follow all the directions and READ all of them and stay on topic, mot talk so much, and be more precise.