Mystery Spikes Lab

I call these Mystery Spikes - they are small, hard transparent spikes. I give them to my 2nd graders &  I don't tell them what they are. By making some good observations and inferences, they figure it out for themselves! We start off with the water gel spikes which I buy from Educational Innovations:

We measure the Mystery Spikes and determine the mass using the balances - we always use the metric system in science class:

We record data:

 Make some good predictions:

 Then put them in water overnight to see what happens:

We kept this one in green water - big change in length and mass! They become big, squishy, slimy, slippery spikes -  so cool! My kids loved experimenting with these polymers! Next we'll leave them out on paper towels and measure the rate of evaporation then put them into different liquids to compare growth. Fun in science lab!

Happy St. Patty's Day!