I need ANYONE who knows ANYTHING about crystals and how they are formed. I'm currently doing a science project with my son and he decided to grow crystals using washing soda and salt. He wanted to see which one would grow the better crystals. We use hot water and dissolved each ingredient until it didn't disslove anymore. We got the idea from a science fair book but the results are not turning out like the images in the book.
We were to stretch a piece of wool yarn between the two glasses and watch over a period of days crystal forming around this yarn...No Go!!! The crystals are forming but we don't have a clue as to why! The book said that the evaporating water cannot hold the crystals in the water and that is how they form first in the middle and the other crystals are attracted to them. As you see I need some help...I'm trying to save the project because there is some really funky stuff growing in the jars! I need to form an hypothesis around this and I'm coming up short! HELP...
I'M BEGGING YOU DOWN ON MY KNEES...I WANT U!!!

Hope you have better luck here DAV

DAV123 said:

I'm not sure I completely understand what the problem is, but if you have a lot of stuff growing in the jar it is because the water is evaporating out of the jar and leaving all of the crystals behind. Since there is less water in the jar due to evaporation, not all of the crystals can dissolve like they were when you set up the experiment. That is why there are chuncks of stuff in the water.

As far as the yarn goes, I'm thinking it might not be close enough to the surface of the water. It suprises me that the procedure you found said the water would evaporate and take some of the crystals with it, since normally this really isn't supposed to happen. (its like when you distill salt water, only the water is supposed to evaporate so that it no longer contains any salt) I would think the yarn would have to be damn close to the surface of the water to get any crystals to form on it. I would also make sure I dip the yarn in the solution before stringing it up above the surface of the water. It might help to get things going.

Does that help? Let me know if you have any more questions and how it goes. Good Luck!!

Sending Creamy an orgnote...YIPPIE!!!