Monday, August 30, 2010

Experiment: Rock Candy

As Usual, from Science Bob

All you do is heat water and add lots and lots of sugar a bit at a time to make a super saturated solution. We managed to squeeze 2.5 cups of sugar into a cup of water. You need to set up the liquid in a jar with a stick for the crystals to grow.

We used a tall old jam jar, a chop stick and a clothes peg.



Then you just put it some where safe and wait, and wait, and wait. The instructions said crystals would take 3-7 days to grow, Ours was growing for about two weeks, we got crystals, but not as spectacular as I hoped. It might have something to do with unbelievable number of ants that fell in. The crystal formed around the ants at the top and then the ants would sink, and form more at the bottom.
The bottom filled with crystals and ants.


It was a bit disappointing, next time I'd make sure it was ant safe. Did we still eat it despite the ants? Heck yeah we did. Yum.

I know she looks a little special, but this was the best photo

The verdict? It was fun and easy, but didn't work as well as intended. Worked well as an ant catcher though...

2 comments:

  1. We did that once, too. We used shush kabob sticks and pieces of cotton string. That was before blogging so I don't remember exactly how long it took but we did have a few crystals to munch.

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