Geology

Experiment Question: How does texture affect the growth of aluminum potassium sulfate crystals? Rationale: The best surface is what crystal growers should use. What we know from our research: Crystals grow when more atoms are added to the crystal. The process of crystal forming is called crystallization. Crystals often form in nature when liquids cool and start to harden. Certain molecules in the liquid gather together as they attempt to become stable. They do this in a uniform and repeating pattern that forms the crystal. Crystals can have very flat surfaces called facets. They can form geometric shapes such as triangles, rectangles, and squares. The shapes are a direct result of the type of molecules and atoms that make up the crystal An ice crystal is made up of ice crystal, water vapor, and dust. When water vapor freezes on microscopic dust it turns into an ice crystal The study of crystals is also known as crystallography. Examples of large crystals are, snowflakes, diamonds, and table salt. Examples of small crystals are, most metals, rocks, ice, and ceramics. .

Our Hypothesis: We think that rougher surfaces will work better because the crystal will have more things to grow on. Sites we used for our research: Ducksters.com Wonderopolis.org

Carolina.com

Materials: 1. 2.

Rock (bumpy) Glass (smooth)

3.

Wood (rough)

4.

aluminum potassium sulfate crystals

Steps of our experiment:

1. Get wood from the playground which had wood chips.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

We got glass by smashing a bottle in a bag and picking out the best piece. We got a rock by going down to the field and going near the fence where there is a lot of rocks. Get Aluminum Potassium Sulfate from Carolina.com. Boil water. Use the water to dissolve the Aluminum Potassium Sulfate. Then we grow the crystals,

Steps for growing crystals, 7.1. first, we make a super saturated solution for the surfaces (rock, wood, and glass.) 7.2. Then, we put the surfaces in the solution. 7.3. The, we wait for it to grow. 7.4 Then we write the conclusion. (wood grew best)

Our Results:(pictures and graphs)

Test 1: The wood grew best and it had crystals all over it. The rock had a lot of crystals, but the crystals slid right off, and it ended up with only a little bit of crystals on it. The same thing happened with the glass. Here are five observations we noticed. 1. The wood grew the most and there were crystals all around it. 2. The rock, wood, and glass all had crystals in the bottle, but the crystals did not stay on and were stuck at the bottom 3. The rock didn’t grow as much as we thought it would grow and we also thought the wood wouldn't grow. 4. We noticed on the lighter parts of the wood it grew more crystals and the darker parts had none. 5.

Names of experts we contacted: (in your field of study) Conclusion Looking at our results, our original hypothesis was that rougher surfaces would work better. One way we know our hypothesis is wrong is that the wood grew the best and it wasn’t the roughest surface, the rock was. We think this happened because the dark parts and the smooth parts did not grow very well. Another interesting that that happened was that the wood grew bigger crystals than the rock and the glass. I think this was because the wood was not that dark and was mildly rough. In conclusion, it turns out that the wood grew best.

The glass (left) had crystals grow on it but all the crystals fell off when we took it out of the container. The rock (middle) did the same thing as the glass and all the crystals fell of when we took it out of the container. The wood (right) grew the best probably because it has the most edges and is rough.