1. Love/Hate Do words matter?

2. Original Experiment Thelittletravelers.typepad.com A few years ago the girls and I attended a workshop at our church by Masaru Emoto, the Japanese scientist who photographs frozen water crystals exposed to certain words or pictures that was featured in the movie, “What the #@$% do We Know.” During his lecture he told of a Japanese teacher who wanted to try this theory out in her classroom in a way that was visible- as most people do not have high microscopic cameras on hand. So she thought since cooked rice had a fair amount of water in it perhaps it would work to see if there was a measured effect on the rice. We were immediately intrigued and did the experiment ourselves and I was truly floored with the results. We marked one jar with the words "I love you" and the other "I hate you" and we spoke those words into the jars each day. Since my girls never really used the words "I hate you" before, they thought this was a real kick in the pants! I have never seen such girls in absolute joy speaking the words "I hate you." They would giggle like crazy and their energy was no where near 'hate.' Therefore, in my mind, I reasoned that this experiment would clearly not work, because in my reality the energy behind the words were far more important than the words themselves. Ha! Was I ever wrong. That first time the "I love you" jar fermented in to a golden yellow and did not mold at all. The "I hate you" jar was full of black and blue mold. Particularly dark were the areas where we would speak the words right into the rice.

3. Hate We have since done the experiment a few different times with different words with some varying results. Last time we had Chinese take out and had some white rice leftover the girls wanted to try this version out. One jar with the word "Love" on it, one with "Hate" and one with "Love Hate" on it. Here are our results.

4. Love/Hate Below is the 'LOVE HATE' jar that has a medium amount of mold in it. This was significant to me in that at least saying, "I love you" or giving an apology after using hurtful words towards another definitely seems to improve the condition.

5. Love You can see a small moldy spot on the front of the jar towards the bottom but the rest of the jar is mold free.

6. Love/Hate

7. Results… The reason I love this experiment so much is that the results are so visual and kids can really see, not just feel, the effects of their own words on something. My girls are constantly saying to each other after one has said something not so nice, 'You better stop saying that or you'll mold your body.' To me this is a great teacher that the one using the nasty words is also putting them self at risk for 'mold.' Because really when we speak the word 'hate' don't we feel just like that first jar looks? We've also done 'You're ugly." vs "You're beautiful" and "Stupid, dummy head" vs. "You're so smart" with less dramatic results, yet still visible.

8. Let The Experiment Begin… Love/Hate