Did anyone ever do cool sciency stuff as a kid? Like, grow seamonkeys or buy a chemistry set or something? Or make something really cool with an erector set? I did.
I used to grow these things called triops. You could send away for this box and it came with the eggs and the food and the tank and everything you needed. Triops are these cool little things with three eyes that look kind of like miniature horseshoe crabs. Here are some pictures of them:
Triops! Neat, huh? They could get like an inch long, and the bigger ones would eat the smaller ones. Eventually they would die off and you had to drain them out, at which time their bodies fell apart. So cool.
I had a chemistry set once, too. I made cool "polymers" (that was what the book called them, I still don't know much about them, I think their molecules are really long chains or something). Anyway. I made one that was really cool. You could punch it and it would be rock-hard and you'd hurt your knuckles. But if you set something on it, like a piece of paper, it would sink in like quicksand. Seriously cool.
So. What did you do?