Crystals always attract attention with their beauty, naturalness and unusualness. Such characteristics are not only natural types of stones, but also artificially created. Many needlewomen, beginning chemists are wondering how to grow a crystal from salt at home? Let's get to this task, and we also learn what is needed to create such beauty as to accelerate the growth process, which is added to the solution to make a bright blue or blue stone.
What is needed to grow crystals at home
To grow a real crystal at home, you need special utensils and a suitable solution. The process is very lengthy, so in a matter of days it can not work. The growth of a stone depends on many factors: the saturation of the solution, the temperature and humidity of the air, the type of salt used for the crystal, the base. For successful cultivation of such beauty it is necessary to prepare:
- Capacity, where the salt crystal will grow( the dimensions can be any, it all depends on the desired size of the stone).The material from which the dishes are made is important. It should not be oxidized in salt water and render color.
- Table salt( which is used in household use).
- Stick to interfere with the solution( wood or glass).
- White filter paper or napkins.
How to quickly grow a crystal from table salt and water
Asking how to grow a crystal from salt, prepare that for this task you need from 3 weeks to 6-7 months, depending on the desired size of the final product. The resulting stone will be very brittle, so do not touch it with your hands. To preserve this masterpiece for a long time, cover the product with a clear varnish. Consider a step-by-step process of preparing a crystal from table salt:
- Take a small container, preferably clear.
- Mix clean distilled water at room temperature with salt. Add the second ingredient a lot until mixing with the liquid becomes difficult. After saturation of the solution, place this dish in a water bath, and melt the salt in it until a homogeneous mass is obtained.
- With a dense gauze or cloth, strain the liquid to separate solid impurities from it.
- Next, take an ordinary white thread, tie a small salt crystal to it and lower it to the cooled liquid. If there is no such stone, take any plastic solid object, pre-soaked in cooked water and dried.
- At the second end of the thread, tie a crossbar( for example, a pencil, ruler or pen), which will be wider than the neck of the selected dishes. This object will be fixed on a tank with salt water, so that the small crystal on the thread is in a suspended state.
- Cover the resulting structure with paper, napkins or cloth and place it where the temperature drops are least noticeable.
- If the selected capacity is transparent, it is easy to see how fast the salt crystal grows. If the dimensions are not visible, you can occasionally pick up a string with a stone and check. But do not touch it with your fingers and do not catch the stone on the edge of the structure.
- After a month the product will increase in size and become the size of at least with beans.
- After waiting a little more( month 2), you will find that the stone has become about 3-4 cm in diameter.
- If the crystal size suits you, remove it, wipe it with dry napkins and cover with clear varnish( for nails or others).When the substance dries, the stone can be picked up and admired.
Color crystal: blue or blue with your own hands
How to grow a crystal from a salt of blue? Only with the use of special food dyes, which can not give a bright shade. When mixing salt and water, you should also add a small amount of blue. When the molecules begin to unite, the crystal will acquire an unusual blue hue. To grow a bright blue stone, you will have to deal with copper sulfate.
Buy this substance you can in any store for gardeners and gardeners. It is necessary to do the same with him as with salt. But since the chemical composition of copper sulfate can be hazardous to health, the solution is recommended to be taken out of the reach of children and animals. Here's the step-by-step process of creating a dark blue crystal:
- Saturate distilled water with copper sulfate so that it ceases to dissolve.
- The thread is lowered into the liquid for several hours, so that a set of beautiful crystals forms on it. Choose the best one among them, remove the others back.
- Lower the thread with a small crystal into a saturated solution so that it does not touch the walls. Within a few weeks or months, the stone will acquire a blue color of incredible beauty.
- Cover the product with a special transparent lacquer to protect against weathering.
How to make a large white crystal from sea salt
When using a classical version of growing crystals, they are made from table salt, which is used for food. This product in large quantities is present on the shelves of any grocery store and is quite inexpensive. But from which salts to grow crystals better? Sea salt is also suitable for the purpose. The difference is how the result will turn out.
To obtain unusual masterpieces of nature, you need to put a crystal in one pot of salt, and in the other - from the sea. In the second case, the growth rate can be greater, as well as the density of the stone obtained. The appearance of crystals may also differ, but only slightly, since the molecules of sea salt and common salt are almost identical.
To make a large white crystal from sea salt, use this method:
- Prepare a transparent glass( or glass jar) for the future process.
- Dissolve a large amount of sea salt in warm spring water, strain the liquid through a dense cloth or gauze.
- Pour the saturated solution into the selected beaker.
- Take one crystal of sea salt, tie a thread to it and put it in a container with the received liquid for several weeks or months.
- When the size of the stone is the way you need it, remove it, dry it with napkins and cover with varnish.
- Having received a white stone, you can not paint it in a different color, because the food colors will drain from the walls. The only way to get a bright shade of stone is to add the pigment directly to the solution from which the crystal will grow.
- If the level of the liquid decreases to a minimum during the growth of the stone, pour into the container a solution of the same consistency.
Photos and pictures of crystals of beautiful and unusual shape
When in a few months you will get an unusual crystal beauty, you will definitely want to show the product to friends, acquaintances and take a picture of it. That's why the Internet is already full of photos of such unusual stones. They are different in form: square, rectangular, round and tree-like. There are also original colors of crystals from salt: yellow, blue, blue, red. Look below a selection of photos of the most original varieties of salt stones grown at home.
Video instruction: we grow houses from common salt
To understand all the important points of growing crystals from salt, look at the video with master classes from experts in this case. Such training materials often show the size of the stones obtained at different stages of their growth( in a week, a month, six months).This video-instruction will help you to properly grow crystals of the house from ordinary salt: