1) The first thing to do is to cleave a piece of your crystal that will serve as your "as received" specimen. To cleave a {100} face, a razor blade should be aligned along the long axis of the crystal and given an impact. It is probably best if you see this demonstrated once by a lab assistant before trying it for yourself.

2) After putting your cleaved piece aside, you must deform the remaining crystal. Although rock salt is usually considered brittle, it is a rather simple matter to bend it under water. So that it is bent to a known curvature, deform it around the radius of a submerged watch glass (or other suitable object). This should be done slowly and gently.

3) After deforming the crystal, cleave off another piece and set it aside. Divide the remaining crystal and anneal one piece 450 °C and another at 680 °C. These should be annealed for at least two hours. While waiting, you should take the opportunity to examine the as received and deformed specimens.

4) Etch the as received sample in the Ferric Chloride etching solution (four grams of ferric chloride per liter of glacial acetic acid). Immerse the crystal in the solution for about 2 to 7 minutes, remove and air dry. Examine the cleaved, etched surface under the optical microscope and look for etch pits. Recorded at least one photograph of the specimen. Repeat this process for the deformed crystal and characterize, as quantitatively as possible, the change in the etch pit density.

5) After the other two samples have been annealed for two hours, remove them, etch and record your microscopic observations. How did the population and arrangement of the dislocations change after each treatment? Can you account for these changes?

6) Determine the directions of the boundaries and the density of dislocations along three boundaries.

7) Make sure that you measure the field of view in the microscope, so that you can put scale bars on your images.