Stalactite

The stalactite. That wasn’t. But it was a darned interesting experiment. We dissolved a couple of tablespoons of baking soda (the king of kitchen chemistry ingredients) into 2 cups of water. Then we put paperclips on either end of a string of yarn, to weigh down the yarn, and strung it between the cups. Then we waited. This is day 1:

This is day 3:

This is day 5:

We had to conclude that Colorado, with its 19% humidity, is just too dry to make the stalactite. The yarn dripped for a little while, but not long enough. But the soda made the most interesting mushroom like formations. And yes, we ended up with two strings of yarn as the first piece was acrylic and didn’t wick water all that well. After a full week, we decided to experiment a little more. We added hot water to both cups, a little food coloring, and stirred up the solutions. The blue dye wicked through both yarn strings in just a few minutes and both yarns started dripping again. But, the next morning, the red dye had fought back, and had won one of the yarns over. Getting the water flowing again caused lots of the mushrooms to fall off, but they appeared to be rebuilding. But a week was long enough, and we dumped the lot down the kitchen sink. No stalactite, but some interesting good fun.