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(make sure to ask a parent for his or her permis-
sion), the desk in your room....any place where
you can work undisturbed.
Label 3 of your cups: clean, flush and waste. Fill
the flush cup with clean water. Next, you will
obtain a specimen and make your first slide.
Want to See Crystals?
Use a measuring cup to measure one or two
ounces of hot (but not boiling) water and pour it
into a clean cup. Slowly add as much salt to the
water as will dissolve. Stir the solution
continuously while adding the salt.
Use the eye dropper (
N, Fig. 1) to place one or
two drops of the salt solution onto a clean slide
(Fig. 4).
Allow the slide to dry. You are now finished with
your tools for this experiment. Clean your tools:
put the eyedropper in the flush cup, take up
some water and release it into the waste cup. Do
this two or three times. Stir the flush water.
The slide will dry covered with a white sub-
stance. Place the slide into the microscope
stage. Rotate the light source of the microscope
until it turns on. Before reading any further, look
through the microscope eyepiece and write
down what you observe.
If you carefully performed the experiment, you
will see little crystal cubes. A grain of table salt is
made up of many cubes. Place one or two grains
of table salt on another blank slide and compare
it with the slide containing the crystal cubes.
If you wish to save your crystal slides, use a
toothpick to put one or two drops of gum media
(
F, Fig. 1) on the slide and gently place a cover
slip on top of the media (Fig. 5). Lightly tap the
cover slip with a toothpick to evenly spread the
media under the slip.
Attach a label to each slide and set aside for a
few days until the media dries. If you don’t wish
to save the slides, wash the slides in clean water
and liquid soap. Rinse well and dry.
Begin to start
thinking like a sci-
entist as you per-
form your experi-
ments. Observe
carefully, take
notes (make sure
you date them),
and most impor-
tantly, keep your
equipment and the
working environ-
ment clean.
Experiments work
best with clean
and uncontaminat-
ed equipment.
And your parents
will be appreciative
of a clean work
area, too.