{A}’s Smithsonian Crystal Growing project was very interesting to observe.
As we checked day to day, things seemed to be progressing much slower than we anticipated.
Especially the yellow, which appeared to be behind the other 2 colors right to the end.
Above are the best side view shots I could get, to show you what was above the liquid level at this point. The green container really had some (ugly) crystal growth on the side of the container, where {A} had poured out excess liquid. If you look closely, you can also see how much liquid had evaporated in the past 7 days.
Arial views show more. As you can see, even with the liquid evaporation, the yellow crytal had no even broken the liquid surface yet.
Here they all are, after being removed from their containers about 10 days after the beginning of the growth experiment. The darker part on top, is the crystal that had protruded out of the liquid level. As you can see, the prettiest parts of the crystals, are the parts that remained submerged. Next time we do this experiment, we have learned that a much higher liquid level would be required. In this case, we simply followed the directions of, and used the containers supplied to us, in the crystal growing kit.
These crystals range in size from 1-1/2 to 1-3/4 inches in height, and all 2-1/2 inches in width, which would be limited to the width of the container.
We hope you enjoyed this science experiment, and outcome, with us!
Awesome!
I with my son made more than just salt crystal growth. We grew crystals on a copper wire wrapped by cotton, which was coiled around tennis-ball. Cotton’s hairs were the places for the formation of very small crystals of salt. First, we grew a little of large crystals (the slow growth of crystals on a small number of sources) and then we got our wired ball fully covered by a lot of small-sized crystals (rapid growth of crystals on a large number of sources).
It turned out very nicely. Photos of each stage can be found here.