These ones are just made of sugar mixed in water. The trick is to heat the water so that it can dissolve even more sugar than normal (called "super-saturation"). When the solution evaporates, sugar crystals should be left behind.
We used a kettle to boil the water in the classroom, then mixed it with as much sugar as we could in a large mixing bowl. Each of us came up with our own colour combination using food colouring mixtures.
The following Tuesday... nothing had happened. That was a surprise! The instructions called for crystals forming overnight but three days had passed with no effect!By the following Friday, some small crystals had started to form on the surface of the sugar solutions. The red one solution by far the best looking crystal growth -- it had been the last one from the mixing bowl, which meant it had all the extra sugar from the bottom.
Next time we should try to keep a constant heat on the water and really try to super-saturate the solution before it cools.Some brave souls tried to eat the rock crystals... Check out this YouTube < VIDEO LINK > to see what happened!
Posted by Karen
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