Crystal Tree

What we learned today:

A crystal is a solid that is made up of small, regular 3-D shapes.

The chemical bonds of a crystal are very ordered and join together at regular angles.

And, crystal trees are really cool!

Henry got a Crystal Science Kit for Christmas this year and today we did some experiments. The best was the crystal tree. This is what it looked like at the very beginning.

This is another crystal experiment... but it will take a week or two to form any crystals. And, the third experiment was a crystal rock which will take three or four days for crystals to emerge from the limestone.
But, the tree! After about an hour, it looked like this. After three hours, ta da! The crystals were formed by the "capillary action" up the pre-formed tree. As water evaporated from the liquid, crystals were left behind on the tree. The colors were from food dye on the tree branches. Very fun to look at through a magnifying glass - looked like cauliflower!