How To Grow Crystal Science Projects In Your Home

Growing crystals can become some great crystal science projects for your school. By experimenting and testing different methods you can develop a true science project and grow some pretty crystals at the same time.

Crystals are formed when atoms or molecules group together in a uniform and repeatable fashion. If you look at grains of table salt under a microscope or through a magnifying lens they all look the same. The same crystal shape is repeated for each grain of salt.

Growing Crystals

The interesting thing about crystals is that we can grow small particles of a substance into large crystal shapes or a number of smaller crystals. Different compounds will grow different shapes and colors. We can also add coloring to make clear crystals whatever color we want them also.

Sugar crystals for example can be grown red, blue, orange, yellow, or any other color just by adding food coloring. Rock candy is crystals formed from ordinary table sugar.

General Growing Procedure For Crystal Science Projects:
We decide what will be used for growing our crystal science projects then make a saturated solution of it. With table salt for example we dissolve as much as we can in a glass of water. Water is the solvent and salt is the solute. Water dissolves the salt into solution until it is saturated and won't dissolve any more.

We take advantage of the saturated solution to make the dissolved material precipitate out and form the crystals we want to grow. Depending on the technique we use to precipitate the solute, we can grow one large crystal or a number much smaller ones.

When some of the solvent evaporates or cools, if its heated to begin with, the solute can start precipitating out and form crystals on its own. If we want to grow a single large crystal then a seed is placed in the solution for the crystal to grow on. This seed can be a rough surface or a small crystal of the same solute compound.

Some crystal science projects recipes call for a specific type string for the crystals to grow on such as nylon. Other instructions say to tie a small object on the end of the string and lower it into the solution a slight distance from the bottom of the container. Others recommend soaking a piece of string in the saturated solution then allowing it to dry. The crystals that form on the string are the seed. Still other recipes state to grow smaller crystals and tie one on the end of the string to act as the seed to grow a much larger crystal.

There are several compounds that will grow crystals and you can experiment with different solvents besides water with some of them. Also several factors can influence how well and large crystals grow. How slowly a heated solution cools, the type of seed, the humidity on some materials. Lots of factors can play a part in growing crystals.

By doing controlled experiments where one factor at a time is changed allows us to do crystal science projects that follow the scientific method. Growing a crystal in itself is not really a science fair project. So be a scientist and ask questions, form an hypothesis, and do experiments to test it. Experimenting...thats where the fun begins.

Some Compounds That Can Be Used To Grow Crystals

1. Table salt: sodium chloride
2. Sugar: rock candy is sugar crystals
3. Epsom salts: magnesium sulfate. Inexpensive and available at most any pharmacy
4. Alum: potassium aluminum sulfate or aluminum sulfate. Found on the spice shelf in grocery stores
5. Baking soda: sodium bicarbonate. In grocery stores
6. Laundry soda: sodium carbonate. In grocery stores

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