A normal ice cube floats in a bowl of water. How can you get it out using a match? We'll show you a trick: To your audience's amazement, you place the match on the ice cube, sprinkle a mysterious white powder on it, and lift the ice cube out of the water with the match. The ice cube sticks to the match as if it were glued on! The "magical powder" is nothing more than... common salt! It thaws the surface of the ice cube a little, when you sprinkle it over, but the water freezes again straight away. Only now the match is frozen onto the ice, so that the ice cube "sticks" to it.

You probably know it already, but with this experiment you can prove it. Dissolve two spoons of salt in a glass of water. Attach a piece of copper wire to both poles of a torch battery. Let the two wires hang into the salt water (they must not meet!) and watch what happens! At the negative wire, bubbles will form. The positive wire will be covered by a greenish-yellow coat.  Using the electrical current you have, in fact, separated salt into its constituents. The sodium in the salt immediately reacts with the water to form liquid caustic soda.  Hydrogen gas is then released and forms the bubbles that you can see. The chloride in the salt reacts with the copper of the positive wire and forms copper chloride – that is the greenish-yellow dust. This whole process is called "electrolysis".

With this salty dough, making neat presents, Christmas decorations and figures becomes child's play. It's easy, effortless and cheap. Mix a cup of SALT, a cup of flour, half a cup of water and a spoonful of oil well. Wrap the dough in cling film to keep it from drying. Put the figures and items that you have fashioned to dry in a warm place for a couple of days. To dry them fast, put them on a baking tray in the oven, at 50 to 70°C.  Afterwards, prime the small works of art with covering colour and then paint them in all the colours of the rainbow. Finally, apply a coat of varnish.

Use these interesting games to make a splash at your party. A game which is always a lot of fun, and at the same time a good test for the taste buds, is "Salt tasting". Prepare 6 glasses and number them from 1 to 6. Add the same amount of water to all the glasses, and then add as many teaspoons of salt to each glass as indicated by the number,  i.e. one spoon in glass 1, two spoons in glass 2, and so on. The person to play the game is blindfolded. He or she then has to put the glasses in the right order, from 1 to 6, according to their taste (by dipping a finger in the water and licking it). You note the results and announce the winner. The person who gets the order right has won.

You will need: One standard drinking glass, one raw egg, water and a few tablespoons of SALT. Fill the glass with as much water as you can, without overflowing it when you place the egg in the glass. The egg will sink to the bottom. Now carefully stir a couple of tablespoons of SALT into the water. The egg turns upwards and starts to "float"! If you add more SALT, the egg will slowly rise. You can make it sink again, by adding normal tap water. The explanation for this "sorcery" is simple: An egg is only a little heavier than the amount of water that it displaces. The dissolved SALT doesn't make the egg lighter, but it does render the water heavier. The more SALT you add, the lighter the egg becomes in relation to the water – until finally it floats.

Please only carry out this experiment with the permission and supervision of an adult! In this interesting experiment, you can visualise the way that salt is produced in the salt mine and the salt works, on a small scale in your home. Weigh out 30 g of salt – this will be your own little mountain of salt. Dissolve the salt in a pot – you've now produced the brine. Start your own salt works by placing the pot on the cooker and boiling the brine (now you're a genuine "salt boiler"!) Boil the brine carefully until all of the water has evaporated.  Watch out! Don't let the salt burn.  Once the water is gone, all that remains in the pot is a white crust. Scrape it out and taste it!  This is pure salt.  When you weigh the extracted salt, it will be exactly 30 grammes.  The salt that was dissolved and disappeared in the brine has reappeared.