Netbasic Ltd.

I am a chemical physicist by training and have always been interested in doing small kitchen type experiments with people who are interested in doing the same.

In the past this has lead to me ruining my Mum's kitchen ceiling, various housemates kitchen-wares, and more recently working for the Vega Science Trust (www.vega.org.uk) both as a web developer and Educational Researcher, teaching children about science in the classroom and via the internet.

One day at lunch we were discussing this over a Sainsbury's Mega-brunch, and we decided that we'd start doing some office science, and forthwith came the Great Netbasic Crystal Growing Contest.

Each department (design, technical, marketing and administration) were given a pint glass, some sea salt, a pencil, a length of thread and just under a pint of (repeatedly) boiled hot mineral water.

Excitement was in the air as each team frantically tried to dissolve as much salt in to the water as quickly as possible and much frustration was felt as they tried to tie a knot around a single seed crystal, but eventually we all got there.

Now, the aim for this experiment really is to grow the largest single crystal possible starting from the seed at the end of the thread dangling in the salt water liquor, and this should take a few weeks to come about properly as experience has shown me.

However the design team, being the design team already have a large somewhat planar crystal cluster growing from the end of their thread, after just one evening and although very pretty isn't quite what would be expected at such an early stage.

The reason for this is uncertain at present but they, wanting to be different, also decided to try and grow a crystal in the bottom of one of the cut-down mineral water bottles, and it is in this bottle that the cluster has appeared.

So the reason may be that this bottle being cheap plastic, and obviously showing the ability to produce quite a bit of static during the afternoon may have affected the dense electrolytic salty water, causing the cluster to grow, but as yet I don't know, and this is something which will be checked upon in due course.

Maybe one of these crystals in their cluster will grow into a large single crystal beating the rest of us, who knows?

The only certainty is that the game is afoot…