Sunday, January 22, 2012

Coal crystal garden! ...not edible

This is a fun experiment to do with the kids and most of you will have the ingredients at home already!

Coal broken up into chunks, or charcoal
6 T Salt (NOT iodized)
6 T liquid bluing
6 T water
1 T Ammonia

Food coloring
Pie tin

Mix salt, bluing, water, and ammonia In a glass dish with a disposable utensil and after well blended drizzle over coal in the pie tin. Drop food coloring onto different chunks of coal and let sit. You should start to see results in a few hours. Left over night, it will look like this picture. It will continue to grow.

4 comments:

Julie said...

SO I have to ask? What is liquid bluing?

Mrs T said...

You'll find it near the bleach. The most common brand is Mrs. Stewart's and it is used for safely whitening clothes... YOu know how people sometimes reffer to the elderly as "Blue Hairs"? Well that's because they used to use bluing to make their hair white... which it did, but with a blue tint. LOL

Julie said...

Got it... Thanks for the lesson on the elderly! :)

Mrs T said...

I'm there for ya, man!