Sunday 7 January 2007

Grow your own!

When i was at school some of my favourite subjects was chemistry and physics, my son asked about crystals and how they form a few weeks back, so I said we could do a crystal growing experiment, have just found somewhere to buy copper sulfate which you can grow bright blue crystals with, I was told tonight online that you can get crystal growing kits here in the UK, if anyone has see any thing of that sort do let me know!


Will keep you informed of progress and take pics when they appear.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Magic®Tree is a miniature artificial tree that grows forming ornamental "buds" in as little as 15 minutes, and "magically" growing into a delicate tree in about 2 hours. The tree is composed of two pieces of white or green colored blotter paper with red, yellow, green, and blue colored tips on the branches. (See Figure2) The colors are dyes consisting mainly of commonly available food colors. The tree is then placed in a small amount of growing solution made from the accompanying blue-green colored powder mixed with 1 teaspoon (5 mL) of water. Over a period of time, small crystals will grow on the ends of the branches. After about 2 hours, the ends of the branches contain clusters of crystals. After all the solution is used up, the tree will dry and, if protected, can last for months. The blue-green colored powder consists of an alkaline salt, an ammonium salt, and water. A representative solution (but not the exact Magic®Treeformula) can be made from 6 tbsp. sodium chloride (not an alkaline salt), 1tbsp. ammonia, 6 tbsp. water, and 6 tbsp. liquid laundry bluing (such as Mrs. Stewart’s Liquid Bluing2). In operation, the solution moves up the tree by capillary action. The tree is permeated by the solution, however, the branch tips, being tapered to a point, experience the most rapid rate of evaporation resulting in crystal formation, not sure if available in the UK tho.

Scruffyhippo said...

Hi Nick, thankyou for the info, I did a Google search and found out more but all the sites I found were in the USA.
If you visit again please leave a way of contacting you, would love to find out more.