Watching Paint Dry

February 17, 2011

Discovery Place’s mission statement begins with the words “We exist to ignite wonder as a preeminent science center…”

Igniting wonder may seem like an easy goal for a Museum like Discovery Place, but in this day of cell phones, internet and mass stimuli, finding those sparks of wonder is not always easy to achieve.

During the Explore More Stuff “Chemistry“ lab unit, which ran through January of this year, one of the activities involved painting with a sodium acetate solution called crystal ink, which forms crystals when it dries.

During the activity, guests painted crystal ink on a black piece of paper, which was placed under a heat lamp so that the ink could dry, causing a white crystalline image to appear. The crystal ink drying process takes approximately 1-3 minutes, and it was fascinating to watch the eager anticipation of our “crystal ink artists” as they remained fixated on their crystallizing images – literally, watching paint dry.

In this age of multimedia and constant noise, it is easy to forget how the simplest elements of our world can often be the most fascinating.

Tim Pula
Learning Experiences