Josh 9

Here is my crystal today

Tayla 7

On the way home from town on Saturday we dropped in to Gemtree to fill up with petrol and I asked Carmela the owner of Gemtree about crystals in the area that I could find crystals. She said I can give you some samples so she went and got me three crystals.

This black crystal is called
Tourmaline. It is found at Harts Range. It has long, flat surfaces.

Thios crystal is clear Quartz it crystallised directly from magma or is deposited from silica bearing solution in veins. It has a crystal shape as it has flat surfaces and edges.

This crystal is man made and was done by putting the rock into a big barrel with sand and spun round and round for 6 weeks to get it that smooth.

George22

Here is a time lapse video of mono ammonium phosphate crystals, with a seed crystal, growing over 15 hours approximately.
The pictures were taken every 30mins.

Pheynia 15

Hi everyone

Here is my rock crystal experiment and i have some photos

George21

I took a time lapse of jelly crystals dissolving in hot water.
The x10 was really good but the x60 was a bit fast.

George20

Here are some photos of lesson6:
1) Preparation
2) Crystal after 1.5hrs
3) Crystal after 24hrs, x10
4) Crystal after 24hrs, x60
5) Crystal after 48hrs

Bradley20. Dissolving Diagram

Hi Everyone.
If you don't completely understand the formation of a solution, here is a diagram to help. My diagram will show you how particles of sugar are soluble in a liquid substance
and thoroughly dissolved to make a solution. To aid dissolving I increased the temperature of the water and stirred. I could also have crushed the particles some more to aid dissolving.

Bradley19. My Crystal growing day 3 under the microscope

Hi Everyone!!
Here are some pictures I took using the microscope. The crystals were from the bottom of my jar containing the rock, and they were the same structures as the crystals shown in my previous posting.
Cheers
Bradley

Bradley18. My Crystal growing day 3

Hi everyone!!
I have just put just finished completing my crystal wonder activity.
I saw that my rock had grown many crystal wands. They were in the hexagonal system with a tetragonal system showing on the ends. Some of the wands were CRYSTAL CLEAR.
Cheers
Bradley

fletcher 12

This is my diagram of types of solutions. Dilute, Concentrated and Saturated. A dilute solution has a low amount of solute (red balls), a concentrated solution has a high amount of solute and a saturated solution is so full of solute that the solvent can not dissolve any more.

fletcher 11

HOW CRYSTALS FORM

I found this on the internet I hope you like it.

Crystals start growing by a process called "nucleation". Nucleation can either start with the molecules themselves (we'll call this unassisted nucleation), or with the help of some solid matter already in the solution (we'll call this assisted nucleation).

Unassisted nucleation

When molecules of the "solute" (the stuff of which you want to grow crystals) are in solution, most of the time they see only solvent molecules around them. However, occasionally they see other solute molecules. If the compound is a solid when it is pure, there will be some attractive force between these solute molecules. Most of the time when these solute molecules meet they will stay together for a little while, but then other forces eventually pull them apart. Sometimes though, the two molecules stay together long enough to meet up with a third, and then a fourth (and fifth, etc.) solute molecule.

Most of the time when there are just a few molecules joined together, they break apart. However, once there becomes a certain number of solute molecules, a so-called "critical size" where the combined attractive forces between the solute molecules become stronger than the other forces in the solution which tend to disrupt the formation of these "aggregates". This when this "protocrystal" (a sort of pre-crystal) becomes a nucleation site. As this protocrystal floats around in solution, it encounters other solute molecules. These solute molecules feel the attractive force of the protocrystal and join in. That's how the crystal begins to grow.

It continues growing until eventually, it can no longer remain "dissolved" in the solution and it falls out (as chemists like to say) of solution. Now other solute molecules begin growing on the surface of the crystal and it keeps on getting bigger until there is an equilibrium reached between the solute molecules in the c

Assisted Nucleation

Pretty much the same thing happens as in unassisted nucleation, except that a solid surface (like a stone, or brick) acts as a place for solute molecules to meet. A solute molecule encounters the surface of a stone, it adsorbs to this surface, and stays on it for a certain time before other randomizing forces of the solution knock it off. Solute molecules will tend to adsorb and aggregate on the surface. This is where the protocrystal forms, and the same process as described above happens.

You can probably see why, from what I wrote above, crystals grow fastest in a solution in which the concentration is near saturation. If there are more solute molecules in a given volume, then there is more of a chance they will meet one another. You also don't want to heat up the solution because that acts as the major randomizing force in solution which causes the aggregates of molecules to break up.

fletcher 10

The results of lesson 5 were that the first observation represented a strong solution,the second observation represented a weak solution and the third one represented a saturated/really strong solution.

George19

Here is a states of matter image I found on Google Images.

Bradley17. Crystal growing

Hi Everyone!!
Here is a photo of a colossal crystal that my brother grew!!
Cheers
Bradley

Pheynia and Mr Dredge

Bradley16. Crystal growing day 2

Hi Everyone.
Here are my recordings(photos) for today that I have done of my crystals.
Cheers
Bradley

Bradley15. Crystal growing day 1

Hi Everyone!!
I Have just made my crystal solutions.
1. I made a saturated solution with the solute mono ammonium phosphate.
I poured off the solution into cup B without transferring any of the undissolved crystals. I then put in my clean rock which had a very flat bottom and dropped about 17 crystals on top of the rock.
2. I made a saturated solutionwith the solute washing soda. I put some of it in a jar with a paper clip hanging in. I almost put the rest of it in a test tube with plastic rocks.
3. I used the remainder to see if I could make a crystal tree.

Tania 17

Hi everone,

How are you all?

Here is some photos of my crystals after 5 hours.

Bradley14. My Crystal Photos

HI Everyone!!
Here are some photos of crystals that I made from a saturated solution containing a sugar solute.

George18

Here are my x10, x60 and x200 pictures of castor sugar.
They took a while to focus properly!
In all of the pictures you can see the cube and rectangular prism shapes.

Josh8

Lesson 5 Types of Solutions

I observed that the mixture that had the white Styrofoam balls with the pink on top in the drinking glass was super saturated because it wouldn’t dissolve anymore.

Tania 16

Here are some photographs of my Crystal Growing Kit that I started this morning.