H.o.p.’s Crystal Growing Experiment, View 1
H.o.p. likes crystals. Inspired by a nice amethyst crystal his grandmother sent him, he got a little “amethyst purple” crystal growing kit from the shop at the natural history museum here. The outside of the box had a picture promising fantastic crystal formations, a fabulous huge amethyst blossom with many petaled spires.
The kit wasn’t called “Little Flowers of the Mineral World Crystal Kit”. I made that part up.
You remember, perhaps, when you were nine years old and you still believed everything ads promised you? Especially if it’s your trusted museum of natural history (which has put its stamp of approval on this kit by having it in its shop). For that matter, how many of you who didn’t live in D.C. or New York had access to a museum of natural history when you were growing up? And not having access or Discovery online, you had to order this kind of stuff from the back pages of comic books?
The illustrations supplied with the interior booklet were not quite so blossomy, but were as promising.
By the way, the box appears to promise this experiment is eco friendly with a big GREEN revolving arrow in a lighter field of green. However, neither the box nor instructions divulged what you were using to make your crystals.
As for the instructional pamphlet, first there were BIG SAFETY WARNINGS. No contact to be had with mouth, eyes or skin! Then a page with pictures of 7 crystal formations and a challenge for you to categorize your eventual harvest of personal magical mystery crystals. Then there was a page with photos of “pretty crystals”.
There were pics of how to mix your chemicals in the supplied box and how to put your base rock in the box etc.
They promise…
Your crystals will grow.
Seven days later you pour off the solution, while wearing protective rubber gloves, and you should find, as per the illustration, that your base rock has more than doubled its size with marvelous crystal formations.
Instructions were meticulously followed. The treasure box of potential crystal was set on a high shelf so it wouldn’t be disturbed. We waited over a week.
Anyway, this is what was promised.
The picture at the top of the post was our result. What we have looks like a rock coated with a thin gelatinous slime. I sighed but Marty considered it a success as something was observable. H.o.p. was wildly happy enough that he took it and, with his small collection of crystals and some of my rocks, made a little crystal cave set in which he placed toy figures and started filming adventures. Which, apparently, had been THE PLAN.
So, to what crystal system does H.o.p.’s formation belong? Cubic? Tetragonal? Hexagonal? Rhombodedral? Orthombic? Monoclinic? Triclinic?
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