(etheric electronic music) [Mister C] What time is it?

-(air whooshes) -(bubbles pop) [All] It's science time.

♪ Oh it's science, science, science time ♪ ♪ Let's all stop and just unwind ♪ ♪ One, two, three four, here we go ♪ ♪ Learn so much, your brain explodes ♪ ♪ Lesson so cool, so fresh ♪ ♪ It's so great you'll lose your breath ♪ ♪ Learning facts and real cool stuff ♪ ♪ Scream for more, can't get enough ♪ ♪ It's it's science time ♪ ♪ It's fun, you best believe it ♪ ♪ Explore and learn new things ♪ ♪ Come and join me, please ♪ I'm Mister C, and this super smart group is my science crew.

Working together with my crew makes learning so much fun.

Actually, you should join us.

Let's give science a try with a simple DIY.

Today, we're learning about caverns.

-What time is it?

-(bubbles pop) [All] It's science time.

All right, got some new batteries in there.

That should be working fine.

Oh, hey, everybody.

Welcome back to "DIY Science Time."

My name's Mister C, and I'm so excited to have you here to be part of our science crew today.

-(air whooshes) -(whip cracks) Today, we go where no show has ever gone before.

Well, at least "DIY Science Time."

We're going underground, and we're visiting the Ohio Caverns.

That's right, we're going to dig deep and learn all about the formations that we find underneath our feet.

You're gonna need some materials to follow along with some activities, and we're gonna shed a little bit of light on the topic of caverns.

(air bangs) Learning about caves and caverns can really be sweet.

For today's activity, you'll need the following items, sugar cubes, clay, toothpicks, warm water, and of course, don't forget to dig out your super duper science notebook.

A science notebook is a tool that every scientist should have because it gives us a place to record all of our learning.

Taking notes and being organized allows us to be better scientists.

A science notebook allows us to go back and review all of the data and information we've gathered during our experiments.

Plus, it allows us to share results with other scientists who might be interested in learning more about what we've discovered.

Whenever you see the notebook pop up on the screen like this, it's a reminder that this is a good place for us to jot down new information during the show.

I've already added a title and a list of materials for today's activity, but our crew is still going to have lots of information to collect and organize as we go through our experiments.

Most importantly, the more you use a science notebook, the better you'll get at taking notes and recording data.

If you don't have a science notebook already, download a copy of Mister C's science notebook from the website.

Caves and caverns are amazing, and most importantly, not everyone has a cave or cavern in their neck of the woods.

So I thought it'd be fun if we actually built our own today.

Are you ready?

Let's do this.

The clay is going to represent the soil.

(relaxed music) I'm gonna take a whole bunch of the clay.

I'm gonna mix this up.

My soil's gonna be very colorful.

And I'm gonna try to flatten it out 'cause what we're gonna do is this is going to be the soil, and we're gonna poke holes in it.

(air zips) Thank you.

(relaxed music continues) (paper rustles) (relaxed music continues) (relaxed music continues) That is a workout.

So I have my soil, and what I'm gonna do is I'm actually going to poke all sorts of holes in here, and this is just to kind of show us that the soil is porous.

It allows water to move through it.

And most importantly, this is going to give our minerals, our sugar cubes that we're gonna put underneath this, the chance to dissolve.

(techy trills) (relaxed music continues) (techy trills) So now that we have some holes in our soil, what we're going to do is actually slide (paper rustles) (laughs) this like this.

Now I built this contraption so that hopefully we could illustrate what's happening to the minerals or the sugar underneath.

I'm going to build myself a tower or a wall of sugar cubes here.

And then we're going to cover it with this clay.

And then with the glass being right there, we should hopefully be able to see the sugar dissolve if we're lucky.

(relaxed music continues) (relaxed music continues) (techy trills) (relaxed music continues) (techy trills) (relaxed music continues) So I'm just gonna add a couple more holes so that we have lots of availability for water to get into the soil and break down and dissolve those minerals.

Now, I have a spray bottle here that has warm water in it, and I'm going to start to spray it here.

And hopefully, my barrier here keeps the water from going down the front of the glass.

That's the goal.

We just want the soil to allow the water to seep through it and dissolve those minerals just like those formations that occur underground and caverns and caves.

All right, moment of truth, water.

(relaxed music continues) (water spritzes) (relaxed music continues) And as more and more water moves through the porous soil, those sugar cubes, those minerals are being dissolved and they're being redistributed throughout the underground layer or our cavern.

This is what forms caverns and caves.

Those minerals are redeposited.

And now we have an entirely new cool looking cavern that we created ourselves.

That is so much fun.

That is so cool.

I have to check it out.

(relaxed music continues) That is so cool.

You can see all the minerals and the deposits happening on the inside.

Eventually that's going to dry, and that sugar's going to reform, and it's gonna be really hard again like the original mineral.

And what's even cooler is on that backside, you can see here where we actually covered our sugar with this clay with the earth.

And the earth is still there.

It hasn't eroded away.

The water just seeped through the soil and it eroded the minerals underneath the soil away to create new formations.

Now, wouldn't it be awesome to actually head underground -and check out a real cavern?

-(people cheer) I think we should give that a try.

(air whooshes) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) I am here with JD Harshfield of the Ohio Caverns.

He is a cavern specialist, and he's going to take us on a tour of one of the most amazing places underground today.

-How are you today, sir?

-Doing well, how are you?

I am excited to be here.

Tell us about what we're gonna see and what we can maybe anticipate when we go down into these caverns.

Sure, yeah.

So we'll be going in the cavern.

It's 54 degrees down there.

It's like that every day of the year, never changes.

So it's really nice.

It's a very beautiful place.

A lot of formations coming from the ceiling and coming from the floor.

Very, very colorful as well.

It's a very beautiful cavern.

And so we're gonna walk into this.

How deep were we gonna go?

The deepest point is 103 feet.

103 feet, which means we have to come -back up somewhere today.

-That's right.

-All right, are you ready?

-Absolutely.

All right, let's go.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) All right, Mister C, right over here is the largest stalagmite in the state of Ohio.

This thing weighs over 800 pounds at our best estimate, but we have no idea how old it is because it's so large, and it would take so much time for it to actually build.

So I noticed it's all white.

So that's an indication of something, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So it is made purely of the calcite.

The calcite is just very pure form of calcite dripping from the ceiling and depositing on that formation.

It takes about 500 years to grow one cubic inch.

So you stack up a bunch of ice cubes basically and do the math, and that's where you'd be as far as age goes.

[Mister C] And then it also means that when we're down here in a space like this, we don't wanna be touching anything because we could be interfering with nature's process, correct?

That is correct, yeah.

All the oil in our skin is really bad for any of the rocks and minerals, and we don't want to interrupt any of that process.

So we need to keep our hands off everything so it can stay safe and stay healthy and keep forming.

So there's a jumbo stalagmite.

I'm sure you have a jumbo stalactite -we can see also, right?

-Absolutely.

-Let's go check it out.

-All right.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) [Mister C] So there are no living creatures in this?

That is correct.

We get one or two bats every now and then, but they do not live here.

They just squeeze in through the cracks of some of our doors.

Then eventually they find their way back out 'cause there's no food or anything down here.

So right over here, throughout the entire cavern you see these, but they're very prominent here.

There's these rocks that are sticking out about this same level.

This is a rock that's called chert.

It's a lot harder than the limestone that's around it.

So when the water was coming through here, it carved out all these passageways.

It was an underground flowing river.

When it came through here, it didn't erode at these chunks as fast as it did the limestone.

And so they were left sticking outta the walls in various places like that.

Chert's very common.

It's just kind of unique how it's in one solid layer throughout the rest of the cavern through here.

Yeah, that's the first thing I noticed is that it's all at eye level for me.

-Yeah, yeah.

-And it just all...

In this space particularly, you see it just... And they look like little potatoes, I mean- -Yeah, yeah, exactly right.

-(Mister C laughs) Yeah.

They're like spuds growing out of the wall.

Right, yeah.

And I also noticed that this space has a different shape than some of the other spaces we've been in.

Yeah, so this shape, this passageway kind of has like an upside down bell look to it.

It's wider at the top here because the water that was coming through here eroded more at the top, and then it rapidly declined over the course of time.

It went down into the lower parts of the passageway.

So just water spent more time at the top here than it did towards the bottom.

-That is so cool.

-Yeah, it is.

Every time we turn a corner, it's like something new.

Yeah, it's a whole new mystery, a whole new part of the story.

(upbeat music) So, JD, behind me is an amazing, wonderful world of teeny tiny stalactites, but I've noticed something really back here.

There's a ginormous stalactite.

What is that thing called?

Yeah, this is the Crystal King.

This is the largest stalactite in the entire state of Ohio, four feet, 10 and a half inches long, 400 pounds.

At our current growth rate, it will have taken about 200,000 years to grow something that size.

[Mister C] 200,000 years to grow that size.

-Yeah.

-That's amazing.

It looks like ginormous like albino carrot.

-Yeah, it sure does, yeah.

-It looks like a carrot with no pigment.

-It's so cool.

-Yeah, yeah.

[Mister C] That plus the ginormous stalagmite we had, -I mean- -We've got 'em both.

[Mister C] Amazing space.

-Amazing space.

-It is very neat.

So this is a good example of why we don't touch anything down here.

This formation was touched when we first opened for tours in the 1920s.

When they first opened it, they didn't know that touching was bad, so that everybody that walked by would touch this one, and the guides would tell 'em it was good luck.

That only lasted a year.

After that year, it changed from this milky white color to this brown color on top just from the oil in people's skin.

It soaked inside and it's stained it brown like that permanently.

So there's nothing we can do to ever get rid of this stain.

That stain will be there permanently.

Eventually, there is a little soda straw on the ceiling.

There'll be a nice white cap that covers it, but it will be thousands and thousands of years before that ever gets there.

(upbeat music) So this is really wet and drippy.

And tell us why this is happening here.

Yeah, so this is a very active part of the cavern mainly because the ceiling is so high.

So it's so high, which means it's closer to the surface.

The water doesn't have to travel through as much rock to get to this level of the cavern.

So here, like I'm guessing it's gonna be harder for like things to form because it's moving so quickly.

That is correct, yeah.

The water won't have as enough time to stay on the ceiling as it normally would.

So all of that mineral would just drip down to the floor.

This could be the most beautiful part of the caverns I have seen so far today.

This is amazing.

Yeah, yeah.

We call this room The Palace of the Gods.

It's a very beautiful room, formations all over the place.

There's a couple of different kinds we haven't really talked about.

In here you see our longest soda straw up under this ledge over here.

Soda straws are hollow through the center, so the water drips through the middle.

They get longer and longer, but never any fatter than they already are until they either clog or until the water starts coming around the top of them.

There's some dual formations in here as well.

They have rust on the top with a calcite crystal coming off the bottom.

So there is a lot to see in this room.

It's very beautiful.

This has been an amazing tour.

I really appreciate you taking the time to allow me to come experience this and show literally the wonders of nature underground.

Like I can't believe we're underground and this is what we've discovered.

So thank you so much.

It's been awesome, and I hope a whole bunch of other kids and families get to come check this out also.

Absolutely, I'm glad you guys came out.

It's been fun.

Yeah, awesome, thank you so much.

(air whooshes) What's the easiest way to remember the difference between stalactites and stalagmites?

It's easy.

Stalactites are connected to the top, and stalagmites might reach the top one day and if they connect, they create a column.

Pretty easy, right?

Yep, and these are some of my favorite cavern formations.

These icicle-shaped deposits form in a really neat way.

The water dissolves the limestone as it moves through the ground.

Once it seeps into the cave, it slowly drips from the ceiling and redeposits calcium carbonate along the ceiling and also on the floor where the water is dripping.

These beautiful formations take thousands of years to form, but we're so lucky that we can actually see them in person.

Geodes are beautiful formations of minerals that collect together when there are pockets of air inside of rocks.

These pockets of air leave space for water to seep in.

As the water evaporates, it deposits minerals.

The colors of a geode are determined by the type of minerals deposited by the water in the air pocket.

So shiny, so sparkly, gorgeous geodes.

Before we dig any further into this episode, let's make sure we add some information to our notes.

So far, we have explored stalactites and stalagmites and explored underground with a cavern specialist.

I wonder if caverns and caves are found all around the world.

Are there any near to where you live?

Consider visiting a cavern with your science crew.

Let's make geodes.

You can't find a geode where you live.

That's okay, we're gonna make 'em right now.

-It all starts with an egg.

-Ooh.

See, what we're gonna do is we're gonna take a push pin.

and we're gonna poke a hole in the top and the bottom of this egg.

(upbeat music) (techy trills) And now you have to blow out the yolk.

(air blows) There you go, easy as that.

Once the yolk is out, we need to cut the shell in half.

There we go, perfect.

And what we need to do is dry out the inside.

All right, the inside is dry.

And now we're gonna pull off some of these little corner pieces just so all the parts that are flaky are out of the way.

There we go.

What we have to do now is figure out a way for the alum, which is going to form the crystals on our egg, to connect, and we do that by using glue.

Now we're gonna take the glue.

We're gonna pour it into our shell.

We're gonna use lots of glue 'cause if we have too much, we can take it out.

Gonna take a paintbrush.

We're just gonna paint the inside of this egg shell really nicely.

We're gonna work to get these corners also.

(upbeat music continues) Now that we have our glue on, what we have to do actually is take some of the powder, and we're gonna sprinkle the powder on top of the glue.

And we want to be very generous here.

We want the alum powder to be all over (upbeat music continues) because if we have extra, all we're gonna do is dump it into our other one.

We're gonna set these over here to dry.

-(air whooshes) -(bell dings) Two cups of hot water.

We're going to add three quarter cups of the alum powder to the hot water.

So that's half a cup.

And then we're gonna add another quarter cup, which gives us three quarters of a cup.

(upbeat music continues) And then we're gonna mix this up really good.

(water sloshes) So that's almost dissolved.

And what we're doing is creating a super saturated solution with water and alum.

-(techy trill) -(spoon clinks) All right, that's gonna continue to dissolve.

And what we're gonna do is I'm gonna split this up into two cups.

So I'm gonna take my solution, -(upbeat music continues) -(water pours) and I'm gonna put a cup into each one.

So that has a little bit more than the other one.

There we go.

Now you can make your crystals any color.

I'm going to make mine blue, and I'm gonna go with purple.

I'm adding a whole bunch of blue because I want the crystals to be really colorful.

And I'm going to add a whole bunch of red over here.

And because I want it to be purple, I need to add a little bit of blue as well.

Stir those up.

Oh, that looks good already.

Ooh, that's so dark.

It's kind of a messy activity, but here is the fun part.

So we've been letting this dry.

I'm gonna put this in here now to see how it works.

But I would recommend you let yours dry a little bit longer.

And I'm going to set it on there, and instantly, it starts to float.

I'm gonna take my spoon, and I'm just gonna press it down.

I want it to sink.

There we go.

I want it to sink to the bottom.

We're gonna set this one over here as well.

Perfect.

And now.

(vocalizes) And now we let it sit.

-(air whooshes) -(bell dings) Here's our blue one.

(gasps) Oh my gosh.

That is amazing.

Look at that.

-Wow.

-That is beautiful.

I bet it's gonna look even better when it dries if we let all the liquid seep out of it.

And let's get our purple one out.

Oh, that is cool.

Look at this.

-Ah!

-That is really, really cool.

It looks like my blue one actually grew a little bit better.

Look at that, geodes.

Make your own geodes.

Try with different colors, maybe different size eggs.

And have fun making geodes at your house.

These are beautiful and would make for great table decorations, don't you think?

Geodes.

(air whooshes) Let's make our very own crystal ornaments.

First, make sure you have an adult with you since this involves chemicals.

Take borax, a common laundry ingredient, and dissolve it into warm water to create a solution.

Keep adding more borax until the solution cannot absorb any more borax.

When you see the borax start to collect at the bottom, it means the water cannot absorb anymore.

The solution is now a super saturated solution.

(upbeat music) Next, create a shape with chenille stems and place it into the solution.

Be sure to leave a long piece at one end so that you have a way to hang your final creation.

Allow the chenille stems to sit overnight in the super saturated solution.

Carefully remove it from the water and ta-da!

You've created a sparkly borax crystal ornament.

(air whooshes) All right, so a really cool part of being in the caverns, we get to show you what it looks like down here in complete and total darkness.

So I would like to shut the lights off and show you what that looks like.

You good with that?

I would love that because anytime I've experienced dark, it means I'm at my house.

Turn lights off, but there's always light -'cause you see stuff.

-Right.

So if you see stuff, you have to have light.

Your eyes will always adjust.

So you're telling me when we turn this off, -there'll be no light?

-Correct.

-Of course I wanna try this.

-All right.

-Let's do it.

-All right, here we go.

Three, two, one.

(light clicks) -Oh my gosh.

-Total darkness.

Put your hand in front of your face.

You can never see it.

There is no natural light down here at all.

[Mister C] I can also do this.

Ah!

(laughs) I brought a light.

(both laugh) [JD] There we go, now we can find our way out.

Yeah, now that would be like... Could you imagine being down here in the space?

-Oh yeah.

-And like traveling in the dark, exploring this for the first time?

Yeah.

I mean, that would be amazing opportunity, but it would be really kind of intimidating.

So like having the lights down here with you guys, it makes me feel like super comfortable down here.

-Yeah.

-Yeah, thank you.

-Thank you.

-(JD laughs) All right, let's turn that off.

You don't need to travel into a cave or cavern to see stalactites.

Let's try making our own.

Mix salt into really warm water until no more can mix in.

Once you have your super saturated salt solution, divide it equally into two cups.

Place the filled cups on a cooking sheet to catch any drips.

Tie a piece of string to two spoons.

The spoons will be used to anchor the string in the water.

Make sure there's a little bit of slack on the string hanging between the cups.

Do not disturb the cups for a few days.

Watch your crystals form and grow as the salt is deposited onto the string.

Drip, drip, drop.

Slowly your stalactites will form from the top.

(upbeat music) Edible science!

We've been creating all sorts of crystals today.

And this next one is going to be a sugar crystal you can actually eat, rock candy on a stick.

With an adult helper, create a super saturated sugar solution with water and sugar.

You're going to heat up one cup of water on the stove top, and slowly add three cups of sugar.

Make sure each cup of sugar is dissolved before adding the next.

Once the sugar is all dissolved, remove the solution from the heat and allow it to cool.

While you let your solution cool, carefully dip a skewer stick into the solution and then into a pile of sugar.

Set this aside to dry.

Carefully place your sugar coated skewer into the solution.

Make sure the skewer isn't touching the bottom of the cup.

It can take up to a week for your sugar crystals to grow.

Observe your crystals every day, and once they are big enough, remove the stick and chomp.

Now that's some tasty science.

(air whooshes) Stalactites, crystals, stalagmites, and more.

Underground is where all the cool stuff is found right in a cavern.

Today was so much fun exploring.

I would love to go into a cavern someday, but I'm worried I would get a little rusty.

I'm just as happy to be here taking notes for the crew.

I wonder if different types of salt would create different formations.

Hmm.

Maybe we should try sea salt or pink Himalayan salt.

That could be so pretty.

What an amazing day learning about caverns!

That's right, what a cool episode.

Stalactites, stalagmites, columns, caves, caverns, you name it, everything that's right below our very own feet.

And if you have those cool things that you've learned about, you wanna hop online and download your "DIY Science Time" notebook.

It's a great place to store information and keep track of all the cool things that you've learned.

Speaking of learning things, JD was awesome, wasn't he?

He knew so much stuff about the caverns, and he was so helpful.

And we got this nifty, handy dandy photo.

I love making these geodes, and I'm gonna encourage you and your science crew to make some as well.

So keep learning, keep exploring, keep having fun.

And remember, science is wherever you are.

Vroom, vroom, I'm here with my buddy, JD.

We're the caverns, and we're superheroes.

That's why we're gonna do an activity today to see how minerals bleh.

-(censor beep) -(upbeat music) It helps if you open the glue bottle.

(laughs) Vroom.

-Nice, you rock, man.

-Thank you.

Oh, the sparkles.

It's so bright.

The beauty, oh.

(laughs)