I found a way that doesn't work!!

Supposedly it was Thomas Edison who prepared an experiment for weeks after several failures. And when it was time to try again, there was a lot of buildup and hope. And once again, failure.

When one of his assistants attempted to commiserate and said something along the lines of, "I'm sorry you failed," Edison replied, "I haven't failed. I've simply found another way that doesn't work."

The crystals we were attempting to grow in the fish tank at work weren't growing. I've done the experiment several times, with several different kids, my own included. Always had stellar results and never a problem.

I had the day off on Friday. And I woke up at the buttcrack of dawn when Eric got out of bed, obsessing about the damn crystals.

So I got decent and went to Goodwill right when they opened this morning, then stopped by work to pick up the crystals and the chemicals I had left there.

Brought the whole mess home and did a little reading.

First, I'd never tried to make such a large batch before. I think part of the problem was getting the ratios wrong. Several recipes are available out there, some have more ammonia, some more bluing, some more salt.

So I think it would probably work okay no matter what in a small batch... but the key was, I had everything too wet.

In my defense it's been YEARS since I did the experiment, I was hurried and harried and complacent.

So I squeezed the excess liquid out of the pieces of sponge, put new charcoal into the dish I decided to use instead of the aquarium, and mixed up a new batch of chemicals.

Sprinkled salt all over the top of it, and left it in the sunny window to dry out a bit more.

And tonight, there are crystals growing. :)

One has to add a little chemical every day for the first few days, so I will be playing with it here at home over the weekend and take it in on Monday.

Who knows... maybe we'll do the experiment again and I will tell them that I made mistakes the first time around and share the Thomas Edison quote and concept.

It's all about learning, after all.