The Summer Holiday Exhibition for Children included interactive exhibits designed to teach even small children about salt in an easy-to-understand way. For its 40th year, the exhibition took up the topic of the food we eat each day as the starting point for exploring the sea’s bounties.

The Special Exhibit Room on the second floor featured four zones, which taken in turn trace the journey taken by the gifts from the sea, from the point where they leave the sea to their processing, stopover on the store shelf, and destination when they arrive as food on the dining table.

Visitors begin by choosing their favorite food from among 60 on offer in the Food Zone. They receive a piece of paper listing the ingredients used to make the dish and move on to the Shop Zone, where they search for the ingredients on store shelves and pick up a quiz sheet. The Underwater Zone displays these ingredients in their underwater environment before they are turned into products, and visitors use this information to answer the quiz questions.

The Workshop Room on the first floor was transformed into a Salt Laboratory where four experiments were conducted three times each day of the exhibition. One of the experiments was a hands-on workshop with visitor participation in using saltwater to make soap. Using just two main ingredients, liquid soap (body soap) and saltwater, visitors make bars of soap by pouring liquid soap into saltwater, removing the white solids, and draining well. The solids are then cut with a cookie cutter to create bar soap.

Through these experiments, visitors learn that saltwater can conduct electricity, make objects float, and solidify substances.

I came away from the displays understanding about table salt and the gifts provided by the sea, and the experiments, taught me firsthand about the properties that salt offers.