Homeschool Science: How to Make Crystals

If you were to ask my ten year-old what his favorite part about homeschool is, he'd say the science experiments.  The kid loves to make a mess and science gets messy sometimes. Since we were learning about rocks and minerals I figured it would be a good idea to throw a little crystal magic into the mix. Seriously, who doesn't like sparkly things?! 

I remembered doing an experiment in school that involved borax and hot water.  Since I make my own laundry soap (find the instructions for that HERE), I had the borax that was needed for this experiment. This is a super simple and affordable at-home project that helps kids learn about solutions and the formation of crystals.

Here's how to make crystals.  

What You'll Need:

Glass jar (I used 2, quart canning jars)

Pipe Cleaners

Borax

Pencils or pens

Thread

Water

Food coloring (optional)

Before we started the experiment, I had my sons visit Easy Science for Kids and learn all about crystals. While they were watching a video on the site about crystals I filled the two, quart jars up about 3/4 full and dumped them both into a sauce pan. It's important to boil the water, so that the borax can dissovle. Plus, heat is a necessary step to the crystal formation. Even in nature!

Once the water is at a full rolling boil, pour it into the jars. You want enough water in the jars so that the entire pipe cleaner is covered by water. You do not want the pipe cleaner touching the bottom or sides of the jar, because when they are forming they also grow on the jar and will make the pipe cleaner part of their growth area. If this does happen, you can easily break the crystals apart and remove the pipe cleaner. However, it's much more fun to see them grow on the suspended pipe cleaner.


Begin adding the Borax to the jars of boiling water. We added 1/2 cup to each jar and stirred until it was dissolved. You'll want to keep adding Borax, and stirring, until you get to the point that when you add it, it doesn't dissolve anymore. After the initial 1/2 cup I added about another 1/4 - 1/2 cup more. If you want to add the food coloring, you can do that now. Just a few drops are necessary. You can use this as a time to show how certain colors are created if you want (ie red+blue, yellow+blue, blue+red, etc).

Next, bend your pipe cleaners into any shape you'd like. Cut enough thread to tie to the pipe cleaner and hang from the pencil/pen. Remember, make sure they are suspended from the pen/pencil with enough room below and above the pipe cleaner so that it's completely submerged in water and not touching the jar. Don't make your shape too wide either. Remember, there will be crystals forming on the pipe cleaners and if the shape is too wide, you'll have a difficult time removing the crystal pipe cleaner from the jar. Trust me, we ran into this with one of them that we did. We just broke it a bit and pulled it out of the jar. Should have used wide mouth jars :)

Tie your dangling pipe cleaner from the pencil and then submerge it into the hot Borax solution. Rest the pencil on the top of the jar and place the jars in an undisturbed area so the magic can happen. Give them time. We let ours sit until the following day and had fabulous results.

I hope you give this easy experiment for growing crystals a try. I'd love to see how yours turned out. Post your pics to the Woman in the Man Cave Facebook page so I can see them.

As always, thanks for reading.

Take care,
NB