In this lesson, you are going to investigate a characteristic of living things - growth.
Sometimes non-living things seem to grow. Does this mean that anything that increases in size as it gets older is a living thing?
Look at the following figure.
It shows you an experiment that Steve set up to grow crystals. He palced some salty water in a warm area and watched what happened over several days.
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Did you notice that, as time went by, the salt crystals increased in size? Does this mean that salt is a living thing?
To decide if something is a living thing, it must show
more than one characteristic of life. For example,
does salt reproduce? That is, can salt have baby salt?
No! So we can say that salt is not a living thing.
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