We’ve been busy here with teacher workshops, but have managed to squeeze in some marble explorations. I remember “cracking” marbles with my mother as a kid, and just realized she was really preparing me for my future career in informal science! I revisited the experiment to see if it is still everything I remember it was cracked up to be.
I started with a single marble from the Exploration envelope:
I heated it, slowly rolling it around the pan, for about 8 minutes in a skillet on high. We always used to use a cast iron skillet, but I only have a Teflon one:
Something interesting happened as I heated. I always knew that Teflon pans allegedly gave off toxic fumes when heated. After about five minutes of high heat, I saw wisps of smoke rising up from the pan, and it smelled really bad. I wonder if it was the toxic fumes, or just any lingering oils that might be in the non-stick surface!
After heating, I tipped the marble into a container of ice water, where it immediately cracked, and now looks like this:
The picture doesn’t do it justice. It looks so pretty and glittery! The neat thing about this is that you can’t feel the cracks on the outside!
Thinking about expansion and contraction of materials in different temperatures, I wonder if because the marble is submerged on all sides in the cold at the same time, that the outside constricted with consistent force all around, creating stress and cracks inside. I still am surprised that I can’t feel any cracks on the outside, and it appears to be just as strong and smooth as pre-cracking.
I also cracked a shooter: (that sounds almost a little dirty!?!)
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