Thursday, January 26, 2012
Making a Crystal Garden
We had to do at least one more crystal project before the girls got tired of ammonia and liquid bluing concoctions, so we made a crystal garden. I think people must buy the liquid bluing (look here) as much to make salt crystal gardens as they do to make their whites whiter nowadays because the bottle came with the instructions looped around the lid. It is super easy too! We used the same proportions as before (except for the ammonia), but made more solution: 4 TBS water, 4 TBS salt, 4 TBS bluing, 4 TBS ammonia.
The idea is that you keep "feeding" the garden (by pouring in more solution every few days) and it continues to grow. We used charcoal briquettes as our base (the material needs to be porous) in the same container as our previous paper towel roll crystal experiment (a recycled Chinese food container). We mixed the solution together, dropped a few drops of food coloring on top of the briquettes, and poured the solution over the briquettes. It appears to be "growing" nicely.
Labels:
Things we make
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