General Science: Growing Crystals

This week we continued our investigations of solutions by making and examining crystals under the microscope. First we made saturated solutions of salt, copper sulfate, and borax. Then we placed a drop of each on a microscope slide, put them outside and waited for them to evaporate, and then used a microscope to look at the crystals that remained. We are also trying to grow some larger crystals. We'll see how they turn out next week...
One week later...
The good news is, Israel got a lot of rain this week. Great for growing crops, bad for growing crystals. We were hoping for our super saturated solutions (say that 5 times fast!) to evaporate, leaving behind beautiful crystals. Not likely to happen in the pouring rain. Next year we'll try this experiment in the late spring. In any case here's a picture of what you get when you SUCCESSFULLY grow large sugar crystals.

General Science: Iron nails in copper sulfate

While we're on the subject of chemical reactions here's a photo of an iron nail submerged in copper sulfate solution. As you can see, the color of the solution changes and in place of an iron nail you get a sandy solid that is copper. What actually happens is the iron displaces the copper and as the reaction goes to completion we are left with iron sulfate and copper.