I love to combine the subject areas as much as I can! I created two science labs to use during a study of the Boston Tea Party! The experiments test the eyewitness reports of the time period by testing different types of tea in salt water and fresh water and in different temperatures of water, warm and cold. TRY IT! I think your students will enjoy it and learn a lot about science and social studies in the process! Click here for the FREE labs!
Smart Chick Teacher's Blog 
Do I need to use LOOSE LEAF tea for this experiment to work? One of the teachers cut open tea bags and used the tea inside. It seems too fine for this experiment and when we tried it, there was no difference in the different test situations.
Hi there! We have done it both ways. We just did the lab and kept the tea inside the bags with success.
We used the fine tea from the bags as I mentioned. It worked great! Thank you for this experiment. It was almost no prep and a time efficient science lesson! The kids loved it and there was a lot of discussion and observation. My fifth graders even tasted the salt water with and w/o the tea. Didn’t like the tea mixture taste so much!
That is awesome!