Discover for Yourself
You can grow halite crystals using table salt, which is the common name for sodium chloride.
Make a saturated solution of sodium chloride.
- Use table salt without additives (iodine) and distilled water.
- Water at room
Discover for Yourself
You can grow halite crystals using table salt, which is the common name for sodium chloride.
Make a saturated solution of sodium chloride.
- Use table salt without additives (iodine) and distilled water.
- Water at room temperature works as well as hot water, this is because sodium chloride’s solubility increases very little with an increase in temperature.
- The ratio of salt: water for a saturated solution is about 5 tablespoons: 1 cup.
Tips for developing a Crystal Growing Science Project
Purpose: To evaporate water from a salt solution leaving salt crystals.
Project Question: What effect does the evaporation rate of water have on the size of halite crystals?
Project Hypothesis : In a salt solution, as the rate of water evaporation increases the size of the halite crystals decreases.
1. To design an experiment to test this hypothesis, first identify the two variables in the hypothesis.
- independent variable: the speed of water evaporation from a solution
- dependent variable: the size of the crystals
- controlled variables: These are all the things that might affect the results, so you try to keep them constant. For this experiment, they include: type of water, type of salt, concentration of salt solution, Material crystals grow on, environment.
Remember: The independent variable is what causes the dependent variable to change.
2. Decide on how you can change theindependent variable. Remember that you must be able to