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Asked by 626furk29 to Chris, Joanne, Kathryn, Kieran, Sarah on 15 Nov 2017. This question was also asked by 594furk29.
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Sarah Guerin answered on 15 Nov 2017:
The easiest way to make crystals is to mix a powder and water together. I use amino acid powders for my research- like the protein powders you can buy in the shops. You leave the mixture overnight and the water evaporates and crystals form. You can also use a pipette to make small droplets that form crystal rings. If you want particular shapes or sizes of crystal you can add chemicals, water or salt to the mixture- then it normally takes a couple of more days for the crystals to form.
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Chris Werner answered on 15 Nov 2017:
Plenty of ways you can do this, one method like Sarah was saying, but if you want sugar crystals or rock candy…boil some water and put it into a jar, watch the fingers! Then add some sugar into it, and stir it in teaspoon by teaspoon. Enough so that theres a lot, but not so much that it doesn’t dissolve. Then tie a piece of string and leave it for a few days, Sugar crystals should form on the string. You can add food colouring if you want!
Theres also plenty of grow your own crystal sets, usually these are blue and form in a few days, not edible to my knowledge though like the sugar ones!
As an aside, that’s how rocks form! Rocks are made up of thousands of crystals depending on what elements are around as they cool. Granite is a great example to see this, You have shiny flaky ones, black ones, and milky coloured ones. My favourite naturally occurring crystal is crocoite, orange, fragile and very beautiful!
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