Persisting

= Persisting﻿ = Persisting is not giving up even though you have attempted the same experiment 3 times. It is continuing looking for an answer even if it is not apparent. Although it takes effort continuing something, persistence will reward you in time. For the Digital Lab Story project, the group I am in is measuring the changes different sugars have in the growth of rock candy. I didn’t think that this experiment would be particularly hard, but we encountered difficulties on the way. To make the rock candy, the group looked online for specific recipes. We figured out how to cook it, and the materials we would need to form the crystals. We had a spill when we were cooking the brown sugar, but we eventually had the solution set up and ready. After waiting over a weekend, we saw that no crystals formed; in fact, there were no signs of crystals growing at all. We asked Ms. Knowles and she informed us that maybe the rock candy solutions weren’t concentrated enough. We went back to the drawing board and made new concentrated solutions by evaporating the water. Again, there was a problem with the brown sugar overflowing, due to the glass being cracked. We eventually fixed everything and had a new set of rock candy growing, only to realize that October break was only a day away. In order to complete this experiment we would have to redo the project a third time. We were persistence in our efforts though, and made sure our third time was our last. We followed all instructions to the letter, made our solutions extremely saturated, and were extra careful when dealing with the brown sugar. Instead of giving up or attempting a new experiment, we decided to be persistent and now have rock candy growing in the kitchen. If scientists weren’t persistent, where would we be today? Maybe we wouldn’t have the light bulb or other inventions. I for one am glad that we decided to stick with the rock candy experiment as it now symbolize our efforts and success, instead of our failure.