Use dried beans to demonstrate the power of seeds. Put beans into a paper or plastic cup until it’s about one quarter full. Add water until all the beans are completely covered. Set another cup on top, and add pennies (or other weights) so the cup presses down on the beans. Make a line with a marker to show the cup’s position.

Wait an hour, then check on your beans. (For the “after” photo, see next slide.)

Dried beans are seeds — you can plant them and grow a bean plant. When you add water to dried dried beans, they start soaking up the water and swelling as they get ready to grow.

This is the first step in root wedging -- getting bigger and pushing against the surrounding rock. The beans in this cup lifted the weight of many pennies when they swelled.