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Hello everyone, in this video I'll show you how to grow a beautiful purple single crystal.
For this we’ll need the following substances - potassium and chrome alum. To begin, let’s make a mixture of alum.
To do this, take a glass and weight 100 gram of aluminum potassium sulfate and 12 grams of chromium potassium sulfate in it. Adding chrome alum will make the crystals violet.
Then, pour 400 ml of a very hot water into the glass and stir until all the alum is dissolved.
After it’s all dissolved, leave this glass for a few days to let the crystals form at the bottom. A day later pour the alum solution into another container.
As you can see a lot of beautiful little fused together crystals were formed at the bottom of the glass. Now pick open the mass of the crystals and put them in a bowl.
Choose from this mass the most beautiful and large crystal. This crystal will serve as a seed from which a large crystal will be grown in the future.
The solution, which previously was merged can be now filtered but that is optional. Now tie the seed on a thin fishing line and hung it in a solution of alum on a pencil or a stick.
Now we can only wait for the crystal to grow. Over time, water will evaporate from the solution and excess alum will form the crystal that is hanging onto the fishing line.
After some time the crystal will begin to take a regular geometric shape that is defined by the crystal lattice of a substance.
For alum it is octagonal or octahedron. Also, during the crystal growth excess crystals will grow as well on the bottom and the line of the glass, and they should be removed.
Though it’s better to save these crystals as it is possible to prepare a solution and raise other crystals out of them in the future.
Also, in single crystals growing it is important to avoid extremes of temperature and pollution of the solution.
After 2 months my crystal become large enough and I decided that I can stop its growth. I pulled out the crystal from the solution and desiccated its surface with a napkin. Next I covered the crystal with colorless nail polish, one or two layers is usually enough. It is important to protect the crystal from further destruction.
After the nail polish has been dried out it’s okay to take the crystals with bare hands. Crystal growing is very exciting activity that develops patience and mind.
I raised two purple crystals. One is dark and the other one is more transparent and bright. Now, ladies and gentlemen, as we have done a long journey growing these crystals let's just enjoy their beautifulness without any further comments.