I’ve priced those crystal growing kits and WOW they’re expensive. So I searched online for a homemade alternative. After getting together all of the chemicals, we were ready to go.
One. Two. Three times we tried to grow these chemical crystals and nothing happened. (and I must say that the ammonia smell stayed in the house! EW!)
Back to the ‘ol drawing board. I did another search after remembering rock candy are essentially crystals and it’s natural! (Although we can’t eat them because the boys are diabetic.) So we started over and success on the first try!
Here’s what we did.
First I decided what I’d grow our crystals in. We used a glass (so we can watch them grow) carafe.
Then I decided what the crystals would grow on. I knew we wouldn’t eat them, so I decided to make cool color shapes with pipe cleaner. We molded them into desired shapes and placed them into our glass carafe. If you want to make rock candy you can use wood skewers or heavy-grade yarn/thread dangling by a pencil. But make sure they don’t touch the bottom…more on why later.
Then we started cooking! Boil some water and dissolve loads of sugar in water by cooking it. I didn’t measure I just poured away! You know you have the right consistency when it starts turning grayish-white and it’s carmelizing (getting thick). You can add food coloring or flavoring if you’re making edible rock candy.
Pour your syrup water into your container. You will barely be able to see your shapes because the water is so murky but as the water evaporates, it clears. We placed our container in the windowsill to help the water evaporate more efficiently. As the water cools and the water evaporates, the crystals start forming right before your eyes! The longer you leave the project, the more crystals you’ll have.
Once we were satisfied with the size of our crystals, we took them out of the jar and laid them on wax paper (which was hard to do because they stuck to the bottom). Tip: Use gloves or a kitchen tool if they touch the bottom because those crystals are sharp! We studied the crystals with our magnifying glasses and discussed accordingly.
Edible rock candy would make a great homemade gift and promote homeschooling too!
I had to repost this article from Heart of the Matter I read. It is about making rock candy crystals. I loved the idea so I wanted to share it with all my readers too. We are going to try this and then i will post our results too.
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