Crystal-growing
In the context of science education: The simple yet exciting endeavor of setting up creative salt solutions, recording observations, and being patient, spurring on scientific thinking and the love of science
Crystal-growing is the act of growing crystals. They can be made of salt, inorganic compounds, sugar, organic compounds, and even glowing highlighter ink.
Fall 2019, Aluminum potassium sulfate crystals grown by Susanna Huang for the 2019 US Crystal Growing Competition
While crystals, or crystalline-like materials, are found in a lot of common household items, such as the liquid crystals in your phone screens and the crystals in chocolate, those are non-single crystal materials.
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Single crystals, for our purposes, have geometry, clarity, and well-defined faceted faces, edges, and vertices. They have one nucleation site (or one initial crystallization site) only. They are a substance, such as a salt, congregated together in a repeating lattice pattern.
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They are compact solids. They are formed from saturated or supersaturated solutions. Their growth and quality of growth can be controlled by the environment, such as saturation level of the solution, temperature of the surrounding area, presence or absence of a seed crystal, presence or absence of a crystal inducer, and the purity of the crystallization solution.
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Their crystallization attributes can be modified with the introduction of competing crystallization substances such as other salts or UV-active highlighter ink. They can be held in your hand and observed with the naked eye. Their crystal-growth and related scientific skillsets can be easily taught to students. They can be very beautiful.
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Learning how to set up wet-lab experiments to obtain replicable crystal-growing results trains students to practice their note-taking, observation, and analytical thinking skills.
​2021 Timber Ridge Elementary School Crystal-Growing Competition Crystal Journal submission excerpts from Ryoma T. (left), who crystallized 10 massive alum crystals and meticulously tracked the growth of all of them over the period of three weeks and from Steven H. (right), who wrote detailed observation, inference, and conclusion notes for his crystals. Both students won Medals of Scientific Excellence, and Ryoma T. was additionally awarded the championship of the competition. Both were only in 2nd grade.
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Learning about and applying the theory of growing crystals, such as understanding saturation and supersaturation for the creation of crystal-growing solutions helps students understand the science behind what they are doing, informing them how to best proceed in their crystallization experiments.
Providing students with the opportunity to experiment with growing glow-in-UV highlighter crystals and different types of inorganic crystals, such as sodium chloride (NaCl), aluminum potassium sulfate (alum), monoammonium phosphate (MAP), and copper sulfate crystals, allow students to be creative and explore new crystal-growing ideas.
Fall 2024 STARS high school branch, glow-in-UV aluminum potassium sulfate crystal (UV activity induced by co-crystallizing the material with yellow highlighter ink)​​
Though growing inorganic crystals may seem simple, the practice uses many of the same basic research skillsets, mindsets, and qualities: critical and analytical thinking, experimentation, note-taking, observation, replicability of results, creativity, and perseverance.
By hosting club meetings, crystal-growing competitions, summer camps, and competing in the annual US Crystal Growing Competition, we enable students to take on crystal-growing with their own creativity, provide students a chance to learn and apply scientific skillsets, help students showcase their hard work at competitions, and help them grow beautiful crystals and be introduced to crystallography research.