Mystery of Sodium Acetate

January 16, 2009 | Science | By: Mark VandeWettering

You can find some occasionally surprising stuff on youtube. I’d seen a number of videos illustrating rapid crystallization of supersaturated mixtures of sodium acetate, but this is something a little different that I hadn’t seen before. Does anyone know what’s really going on here?


httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNvZLTkj2kw

P.S. It’s “iodized” salt, not “ionized”.

Comments

Comment from wrm
Time 1/23/2009 at 7:12 am

Our kids play with those, they call ’em “squishies”. Some kind of something which you buy as small granules, but if you stick it in water it soaks up the water like crazy.

When they’re in water they’re almost invisible. Add some colour to the water, bad lighting, and a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, and there you go.

W