This will make a saturated solution. Hang your pipe cleaner shape in the jar so that it is completely covered in the solution. Let it sit overnight. Gently remove your now crystal-covered shape in the morning and let it dry by setting it in a dry glass. Optional: To make colored crystals, use colored pipe cleaners and add drops of food coloring to the solution in step five. To make your snowflakes glow in the dark, paint the pipe cleaner shape with glow-in-the-dark paint in step one and let it dry completely before continuing.
Once the crystals have dried, cut off the string and tie a ribbon to one point of your crystallized shape to make a Christmas tree ornament! These ornaments are fairly sturdy and make lovely Christmas gifts for friends, teachers, or family members. As in the rock candy project, you made a saturated solution of Borax, which is a chemical that forms crystals when the conditions are right.
By mixing it with hot water and letting it cool and having something for the Borax solute molecules to attach to the pipe cleaner shape , you gave the solution the right conditions to grow crystals! Once the crystals started to grow on your shape, more and more crystals formed around them. Ice crystals that real snowflakes are made of are not quite like these Borax crystals, but they do look sort of similar and they both are pretty and sparkle when light shines on them.
Real ice crystals are made only of water. The difference is that they are formed when water vapor in clouds freezes and falls to the ground as snowflakes! Frost is another form of ice crystals that you might see on windows and grass on cold mornings. To learn more about snow and ice crystals, check out our Snow and Hail article. How can you tell the difference between sugar and salt crystals? Of course if you tasted each of them, you would know right away which one was salt and which was sugar because they taste very different.
In this project you will find out how to tell sugar and salt apart just by looking at them! Use your fingers to spread the grains apart a little so you can see them better. Now look closely at the grains on each sheet of paper and compare how they look. Do you notice any differences between the two? Now use your magnifying glass to look up close at a few grains of the salt.
What shape are they? Are they all about the same shape? Draw their shape in the correct spot on the worksheet. Now take a look up close at a few grains of the sugar.
Are they a different shape from the salt crystals? Do you notice anything else that makes them look different from the salt? Draw their shape on the worksheet. Sugar and salt grains are actually tiny crystals. Can you tell if the picture to the left is salt or sugar? If you were to make a saturated solution of salt and one of sugar, you would be able to see them grow into much larger crystals, but they would always have the same shape as these tiny crystals do!
The salt crystals are cube shaped like dice and have six sides. The sugar crystals are very rough looking and are shaped more like rectangles with pointed ends. Most of the crystals are the same shape and size and look very similar to each other, but you probably saw a few crystals on your paper that looked a little different. Those crystals probably had pieces broken off of them, or there might even be more than one crystal stuck together, making them look different from the others.
Also, the coloring of the crystals is a little different. Sugar crystals look very clear and sparkly while salt is duller and looks more white-colored or frosted. There are many factors that affect crystal growth, so crystal projects are great for scientific experimentation and science fairs. For example, many crystals are formed because of evaporation. Temperature and humidity are two things that affect the rate of evaporation, so you could design an experiment to see how different temperatures and humidity levels affect the rate of crystal growth and the size of crystals.
There are many substances that can be used to grow crystals. You could design an experiment to test which one grows larger crystals under the same conditions. Try alum, Epsom salt, table salt, sugar, baking soda, or non-household chemicals like copper sulfate blue crystals and potassium ferricyanide red crystals ; adult supervision is required for the last two.
After you finish this article, we invite you to read other articles to assist you in teaching science at home on the Homeschool Hub, which consists of over free science articles! Home Science Tools offers a wide variety of science products and kits.
Find affordable beakers, dissection supplies, chemicals, microscopes, and everything else you need to teach science for all ages! But, we can help. Over the days when you left your sticks in the sugar solution some of the water molecules evaporated meaning that there was less water in your solution to mix with the sugar.
The sugar molecules in the solution join together when they bump into each other and start to form crystals. Crystals form best when there is a surface to grow on, such as the surface of the solutions the sugar layer you had to remove or the stick in the solution. Sugar molecules continued to join on to the crystals, like building blocks, until the end of the experiment when you removed the crystal stick from the solution.
You will need: Measuring cup Water Sugar 6 plastic cups Saucepan Food colouring Kebab or lolly sticks Clothes pegs Spoon String optional Method: Add 3 cups of sugar and 1 cup of water then stir until dissolved, then add any food colouring of your choice. Make sure your sugar has fully dissolved, then leave to cool for a few minutes before adding it into the plastic cup.
Then get your stick and insert the end in the middle of a clothes peg, then clip another clothes peg at the end of the first peg. Place the stick in the sugar solution with the pegs lying across the top of the cup. STEP 2 - Heat the water over a flame. If you are going to make salt crystals you need only heat the water to around degrees. If you are going to make sugar crystals, bring the water up to boiling. STEP 3 - Pour the sugar or salt into the water and stir. Keep adding more until it will no longer dissolve.
Then add just a little more water and continue to heat and stir until all the material disappears. STEP 4 - Turn off the burner and let the water cool to room temperature.
STEP 5 - Pour the contents into the paper or plastic cups.
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