Does anyone know information about Growing Crystals?

Question

Science Project

Answer 1

In order to have crystal growth, you should have a proper temperature and pressure setting as well as atom concentration in the magma.

Crystallization occurs when the temperature drops below melting point, which is around 1000o C (it depends on the type of the magma; the more silica it has, the lower temperatures u need)


Formation of single crystals marks the start of crystallization, showing planar surfaces as boundaries, called “crystal faces”.

These crystal faces are maintained during crystallization while the crystals grow larger.

If there is enough space and time for these crystal faces to grow, the ending result would look the same as the small initial grains in shape, except that it’s bigger in size.

However, if the space is too small, the growth of the crystal will interfere with another one and end up forming a solid mass of crystalline “grains”.

Also, the more time crystals have to grow, the bigger they are, that's why mineral grains are best seen in intrusive (plutonic) igneous rock samples.

Answer 2

Say you wanted to make salt crystals. Start by using the purest salt you can get and the purest water (deionized). Heat the water to near boiling and add the salt with stirring until some of the salt precipitates out and falls to the bottom. Let this heated saturated solution cool down VERY SLOWLY.

Guessing that you are preparing them from a saturated solution! It is important to cool the solution down slowly to get pure crystals. Cool the solution down, the slower the better.

If you want even purer crystals, take the largest ones produced by cooling the first solution, and make a second saturated solution out of them. Cool down as slow as possible, and repeat the above steps over again. Each time the crystals should get larger and larger as well as purer and purer.