Smarty gor gor has always been fascinated with crystals and stones. Recent trips to the library, he has been borrowing books on crystals and stones. One of the books even contain tips and tricks on how to grow crystals, he got so excited, immediately we headed out to get the ingredients we need.
Ingredients required to grow crystals are pretty simple and can be easily found near your neighborhood stores. They are:
– Epsom salt
– clear containers
– stick or pencil
– string
– spoon
– distilled water (in this experiment, we use distilled warm water)
Once all ingredients were gathered, smarties began to put in as much salt as possible into the bowl of warm water and stir. Noticed that we are using warm water here. It is best to use hot but due to safety purposes, we are using warm instead. Great to occupy children while I need to get busy with my housework!
In the meantime, you may tie the string around the stick of pencil as shown above.
When most of the salt is being dissolved, suspend the string into the container from the stick or pencil laid across the top of the container.
Leave your container somewhere that it will not be disturbed and wait to watch your crystal grow!
How do the crystals grow?
Well, this is called the crystallization process where the salt molecules in the solution meet up and interlock. They fit together like pieces of jigsaw puzzles thus forming the crystal nucleus. As more and more of them connect, the bigger crystal will be formed by attaching to each other.
Important things to note:
It is best to keep adding salt until no more salt gets dissolve. As soon as you see salt settling to the bottom of the container, that means the solution is fully saturated and no more salt will be dissolved.
For more experiments and findings:
1. Try to experiment with different types of salt, such as uniodized salt, iodized salt, sea salt, or even normal cooking salt.
2. Try to experiment with different types of water as well, such as tap water, hot water, distilled water and observe if there is any difference.
3. For a perfect looking crystal, you will need to use uniodized salt and distilled water.
Watch smarties performed the experiments step and step and be amazed by the crystals that have grown at the end of the experiment!
*PS: The book that smarties are reading is
