Laundry Soap Crystals
Can we really make crystals out of soap? You bet! These crystals grow really fast, provided your solution is properly saturated. In only 12 hours, you should have sizable crystals sprouting up.
You can do this experiment with either skewers, string, or pipe cleaners. The advantage of using pipe cleaners is that you can twist the pipe cleaners together into interesting shapes, such as a snowflake or other design. (Make sure the shape fits inside your jar. )
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Yes absolutely!
is it safe to color the crystals with food coloring?
This is interesting. We did the borax with pipe cleaners. It grew the crystals really fast, in only a matter of a couple of hours we had A LOT of crystals on our pipe cleaners. It was really cool! After the kiddos removed the pipe cleaners with the crystals on them they wanted to try it again, but they had no more pipe cleaners, so they have tried wire They made shapes out of the wire and left them over night. The crystals are growing MUCH slower on the wire than on the pipe cleaners. We are wondering why that is? SUPER FAST with pipe cleaners and SUPER SLOW with the wires. They hypothesized:
The crystals are growing slower because the saturation is decreased
or
The crystals are growing slower because wire is hard and nonporous and slippery while pipe cleaners are soft and porous?
We sure are curious.
Wow – that sounds cool (and not quite what you were expecting!) Can you send me a picture? Maybe I can suggest something…
hi,
on are first try, we could not get the 2 cups of Borax and 2 cups of water to mixed.we mixed and mixed. So we dumped that one and turned up the heat. then it seemed to work so i let it sit for a few minutes and saw crystals forming on top when we came back..we took the crystals off the top then poured just the liquid into a 2 liter soda bottle like you shown . we put the stick in it, we a snowflake pipe cleaner hanging from holes on the side . We looked at it three hours later and it just looks like a big rock with some water in it. What did we do wrong?
Oops! Sorry – I didn’t see your question before. The temperature of the water is going to affect how much borax you can dissolve into the solution. What happens when you heat the solution? Does it reduce the slush on the bottom? When you pour it into your jar, don’t add the slush – it will only concentrate the growth in the wrong place. Just use the solution you mixed up – that should grow your crystals overnight. You want to dissolve as much of the borax into the water as possible, so bring your water to a boil when you add your borax to help you do this. Let me know how it goes.
I guess I needed to write a question to get a response. We were not able to get our Borax to dissolve. We got a little bit of crystals in the end, mostly we got slush in the bottom. Why weren’t we able to dissolve two cups of borax in two cups of hot water? You used more than that. We stirred and stirred a long time and didn’t get it to work right.
Yes, if you place the crystal in a glass of water, they will dissolve back into the solution. But no, they don’t just drip off the pipe cleaner!
really liked the video, think that I am going to try it! Once you make the Borax Crystals, do they ever get out of the “crystal form” an go back to liquid?? That was so cool to watch!!!
We’re working on this right now and having a hard time getting it dissolved. We put in 2 cups of water and 2 cups of borax and heated it almost boiling, but we still can’t get it all dissolved. In the video you added much more than 2 cups. We’ll see if it grows crystals.
The sugar solution tends to be trickier, as the solution really must be really super-saturated. If you’re a little unsure about whether it will set up or not, dump in extra sugar and stir over the heat until it all dissolves. Continue to add sugar until you simply can’t get it to dissolve anymore. (Don’t stop here, though, or you’ll get a solution that will solidify in one huge chunk, and you’ll never get it out of the jar.) Add a bit of water (just enough to make those stubborn undissolved bits at the bottom disappear) and then you’ve got the perfect solution. Depending on how much you make, this cooling process could take an hour or more (get it down to the 120s deg F). Try not to shake the sugar solution too much after crystals start to form on the stick (send the kids home with the syrup in a sealed jar and stick in hand). You can help it along by adding a sugar-coated stick to the solution when first inserted.
Yes, this was helpful. How far ahead of time can I make the sugar solution? Can that be done the night before? I’ve done the borax crystals with my own kids before so I know that is fairly easy but we have not had good luck with the sugar yet.
Thanks
This is a great one to do with a group of kids, as you can whip up a large batch and then send it home with them. You might want to test your solution out ahead of time to make sure it’s saturated enough. If you’re worried about the solution not setting up right, you can always make it ahead of time, and when you get there add a bit more water and solids to have them get the essence of what you’re doing (this might be a good idea for the rock candy solution, however you really can’t go wrong with the borax crystals).
Once it’s cooled down A LOT, pour it into the jars (you don’t want kids sloshing around a lot of hot liquid). With the borax crystals, you can just keep adding fresh pipe cleaners to the room-temp liquid each day to get a fresh crystal growth – it doesn’t need to stay hot. Lids are fine for transport, but just be sure to demo what you want them to do when they get home. Does that help?
I was planning on doing this project with a group of kids and I’m wondering if it is important to have the jars undisturbed once pouring in the hot saturated solution. Would the jars be okay to travel home with? Could we just put lids on until they got home? Will this work with the Rock candy crystals too?
Elissa