Monday, December 20, 2010

Crystal Snow Flake

What you need:
*1 cup of boiling water
* empty jar or glass
* 3 equal size pipe cleaners
* Borax
* pencil
* string

How to:
1. use pipe cleaners to create a snowflake
2. tie 1 end of string to snowflake and other end to pencil
3. boil 1 cup of water (or enough to cover snowflake)
4. add water to glass
5. add in 3 TBS of Borax ( 1 at a time) stirring until dissolved (need 3TBS per 1 Cup of water)
6. add snowflake making sure it doesn't touch sides or bottom of glass and rest pencil on top of glass
7. let sit overnight
8. in the morning you will have a beautiful snowflake!


How it Works:
"you create a saturated solution of Borax because the hot water holds more borax crystals than cold water. The heated water molecules move farther apart, making room for more of the borax crystals to dissolve. When no more of the solution can be dissolved, you have reached saturation. As this solution cools, the water molecules move closer together again. now there's less room for the solution to hold onto as much of the dissolved borax. Crystals begin to form and build on the pipe cleaner as the borax comes out of the solution"