Crystals and Crystal Growing Activity

We began learning about minerals and crystals in class this week, but for this blog we are focusing on the crystals. A crystal form is a set of crystal faces defined according to their relationship to the crystal axes. Crystal forms look like 3D objects, like cubes or pyramids.
In my group we grabbed 5 sponges, 3 pipe cleaners, and one piece of charcoal. We broke the charcoal down into smaller pieces to spread it out on our plate. We then poured 2 tablespoons of water, 2 table spoons of the bluing solution, and 2 tablespoons of salt on the objects on the plate. We didn't think it was enough solution for the size of our objects so we used the same amount of solutions over again, doubling the original recipe. We had two different types of salts, fine grained and larger grained. We separated them on to the different sections to see if the reaction would be different. There was no reaction to begin with but we put it on the windowsill to let sit for a few days.

 We checked our crystal formation on Thursday and our plate had a little bit of formation. The most formation appeared on the sponges. Other groups plates had a lot more, but they also added a lot more solution to theirs. We then added 10mL of water, 10mL of ammonia, 10mL of bluing, and 5 mL of salt to the plate and put it back on the windowsill.