Popcorn Rock: Day 1

I’m finally getting around to doing something I’d planned to do in February 2012. Hey, that’s almost a year and a half ago! Seventeen months!

I’d taken a two-day road trip to St. George, Utah, during Super Bowl weekend. My primary purpose was to see Zion National Park, which I would do on Day 2. On the day I arrived, after checking into my motel room and having lunch, I drove over to the Dinosaur Discovery Site and spent an hour or so wandering around the place.

As I usually do when I visit educational sites and museums, I stopped by the gift shop and spotted something I just had to have:

 

Yep. A “Popcorn Rock.” It’s actually a dolomite that produces Aragonite crystals when it’s immersed in white vinegar. Something that changes into something else? Heck, that’s for me!

Well, wouldn’t you know it, I didn’t have the appropriate bowl to begin my experiment, so for the next few weeks (whenever I remembered to do it), I shopped for a nice bowl that could not only help me sprout the popcorn crystals, but display it with some class as well.

Okay, so I found a good bowl a few months later. But you know how these things work … I kept the rock in its bag in the bowl in the kitchen and it promptly got buried under some stuff. Until recently. And that’s when I figured if I’m going to do this at all, I’d better get started.

What to do and how to do it? Here, you read for yourself:

 

I nestled the rock in the bowl, and covered it with white vinegar:

I'll post updates as the project progresses. Grow, popcorn, grow!