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"Rocks and Minerals: The oldest story tellers"
-A.D Posey
Rocks and Minerals come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and forms. They are a part of our everyday lives. Just like they are important to us, rocks and minerals are important to farms as well; specifically their soil.
Click through these photos to see a few different examples of minerals In our world.
Images by Carlos Staley and from Pexelstockphotos.com
In this video, we will dig into the first important part of soil: Minerals.
We will discus different types of minerals, how they are made, why they are important and more.
Bellow are the vocabulary words and definitions for this section .
Vocabulary
Minerals
Naturally formed, inorganic crystallin compounds
Primary Minerals
Unaltered compounds found within the Earth. Examples include Sodium Chloride of Silicon Dioxide.
Secondary Minerals
Altered primary compounds found within the Earth or near its surface . Usually by rain, snow or wind. Examples include gypsum or other valuable stones.
Mineral Activity
The formation of rock candy demonstrates how minerals ,such as Sodium Chloride, form on the Earth's Crust from sea water.
DIY Homemade Rock Candy
Science Project
Ingredients for Homemade Rock Candy
Materials
● 2 cups of water
● 6 cups of sugar (white, granulated) plus some spare
● Optional – Food coloring (2 -3 drops of food coloring per jar/cup)
● Optional – Flavoring extract (1 tsp) or oil. Such as Raspberry extract, cinnamon oil, Peppermint extract, Banana oil, maple extract or just choose your own flavoring.
Other Needed Materials
● Clean containers such as cups or mason jars
● Something to grow sugar crystals on, such as some string or a wooden skewer
● Something to hold the thing your crystals form on away from sides of the jar and bottom of the jar, such as a pencil or some clothespins
● Pot
● Oven
● Mixing spoon
Instructions
1. Make sure you gather your tools beforehand. You don’t want to let your sugar solution cool before you are ready.
2. Put each measuring cup of water in the pot and heat it to boiling. Make sure your pot has a lot of space because the solution will expand quite a bit.
3. Once you have boiling water, begin adding granulated sugar a little at a time.
4. Keep mixing and heating until the sugar is completely dissolved. This took us about 20 minutes.
5. Once the sugar is dissolved, divide your supersaturated solution into each cup or glass jar.
6. Add your flavoring and/or your coloring now! Not too much, and make sure you mix well.
7. Dip your string or wooden skewer into the supersaturated solution. Anchor it to the top of the Container somehow. We used a string and a paperclip. Make sure the string isn’t touching the sides of the jar or the bottom of the jar.
8. Put your sugar-water solution somewhere safe to sit for a few days. Watch and wait for your sugar crystals to grow. These are your rock candy crystals.
9. It is unclear how long you need to let your sugar crystals grow. Some of our cups had crystals after 2 days, others still looked pitiful after an entire week. My dad says when he was a kid, they used to wait for a month. I would recommend using seed crystals by rolling your (wet) string or skewer in granulated sugar before putting it in your supersaturated solution and see if that speeds things up.
10. Enjoy your delicious science project turned homemade rock candy.
How does it work?
In nature, many substances are crystallin such as sugar, salt, and other minerals. When dissolved in water, these substances lose their crystalline structure, but the crystals can reform if the solvent is unable to keep the solute suspended in the stationary phase. The excess solute then precipitates out of the solution and aggregates around existing seed crystals.
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