Growing crystals

We decided to try and grow our own crystals as a hands on project for our Marie Curie unit.  While Marie studied magnets, her husband, Pierre Curie worked on crystals.  We thought we would give it a try.  It was really quite simple, and I think the crystals turned out pretty good.

Supplies:  Borax, a clean jar, a white pipe cleaner cut into 3 equal pieces, a pencil, and some string.  Blue food coloring is an option for those who want a little color in their crystals.

What now?  Here is a link if you want to print out the directions.  Basically, you boil some water.  While you are waiting for your water, cut your pipe cleaner into 3 equal pieces, twist them together in the middle and pull each piece out so that the pipe cleaner takes the shape of a snowflake.  Make sure that the pipe cleaner snowflake fits inside the jar without touching the sides.  Tie one side of your string to one of the snowflake arms and the other side of your string to a pencil so that the snowflake hangs inside of your jar but does not touch the bottom.  Your water should be ready by this point so fill your jar with the boiling water at a ratio of 1 cup boiling water per 3 tablespoons of Borax.  You have to add the Borax 1 tablespoon at a time and stir it just a bit to make it dissolve faster.   No worries if it does not completely dissolve.  Add your blue food color if you are doing so at this point.  Now you can hang your pipe cleaner snowflake into the jar letting the pencil rest on the top but make sure that the snowflake is completely covered by the water/Borax mixture.

This needs to sit overnight undisturbed so that the crystals can take their form.

In the morning, just pull your faux crystals out by the string and see your newly formed crystals.  This picture does not do the crystals justice.  They are actually very shiny and glass-like, and you can see repeating patterns which constitutes the crystal.

The only 2 things I would suggest now is not to tie the string too tight because as you can see, I had a hard time cutting it off due to crystal formation around the string, and we used a little tape on both sides of the pencil to help hold the pencil in place.  Otherwise,  a great activity!