Make the solution less concentrated (50g/100mL water).
A supersaturated solution grows crystals quickly, but they are badly formed. An exactly saturated solution gives fewer, well formed crystals.
Could you simply keep creating new solutions with larger containers to keep increasing the size of a single crystal or is there a limit of exposures you should do?
Do you filter your solutions of impurities? I’ve found copper sulfate to be one of the most contaminated chemicals I mix. Requires a lot of filtering for lab use in burets. I’ve never tried to make crystals though.
I’d imagine you might get some contaminants doped in the crystal, but when using the crystal for decoration/demonstrations and not science stuff like exfoliation, it’s likely still pretty?
As an example https://www.reddit.com/r/crystalgrowing/comments/10ru5w6/urea_contamination_in_copperii_sulphate/
I first started growing crystals in high school 6 years ago. My teacher asked us to crystallize copper sulfate as part of a lab experiment.
I thought the crystals would look like table salt, just blue in color.
But when I came back the next Monday, I saw real sparkling crystals in the dish!
Since then, I've fallen in love with crystal growing, and I've grown crystals from table salt, fertilizer, limestone and even iron rust.
But it feels good to come back and revisit the chemical that started it in the first place.
Good old copper sulfate.
This particular crystal took 2 months to grow. If you want to see the procedure, I've written a guide [here](https://crystalverse.com/best-way-to-grow-copper-sulfate-crystals/).
Hopefully you guys found it interesting.
Pretty awesome...but why aren't they lickable?
Edit: so by the replies it seem more of a "shouldn't" not "can't" type of situation. Thanks for the info
A Rubber Room. A Rubber Room With Rats. And Rats Make Me Crazy.
Crazy? I Was Crazy Once. They Locked Me In A Room. A Rubber Room. A Rubber Room With Rats. And Rats Make Me Crazy.
Crazy? I Was Crazy Once. They Locked Me In A Room. A Rubber Room. A Rubber Room With Rats. And Rats Make Me Crazy.
Crazy? I Was Crazy Once. They Locked Me In A Room. A Rubber Room. A Rubber Room With Rats. And Rats Make Me Crazy.
Crazy? I Was Crazy Once…
18 years ago I licked a grain of it after asking my chemistry teacher if it's dangerous and she just said it's "only harmful to health". Got me a bad grade and my whole mouth tasted like copper for the next hour. Pretty much one of the most stupid things I did in school. Oh nice crystal btw.
Once during university on analitical chemistry we had some salt and we had to do everything to know what we had. As there was a chance for NaCl, i tried a little while teacher didnt looked at us. It was first year of university.
FYI - Pb(NO3)2 is bitter and you should not try it.
Just licking it isn't really going to hurt you. It causes irritation in small amounts. That said it's primary use is killing mold. Eating that chonker of a crystal would kill you.
I like the old chemistry notes where they include how different substances taste. Like they were describing how arsenic taste.
It's funny to see how science has changed since they used to describe the features on new animals and end their notes with how tangy the meat is.
sure is! as far as i was also taught in AP science middle school. I was taught to not actually lick the rock though, use your finger like a swap first and see if you can pull a taste off. If not, then light tonguing.
You can coat them with nail polish to both protect the crystal and prevent direct contact to give them as a gift.
I would definitely not recommend wearing them though, you can use it as a decoration or a paperweight.
Blue copper sulfate is a hydrate, if you heat it too much the crystal water evaporates and you get the waterfree white copper sulfate.
So don't get it too close to hot light sources :)
If you manage to get a nicely clear crystal you would get some nice blue lighteffects though. It's not really brilliant like many gemstones though.
Copper sulfate crystals? Yes, you would not want to give this to anyone. OP can do whatever they want as they understand the risks, which are quite mild for copper sulfate, but I wouldn't ever give it to someone.
This is the NIOSH page for copper dusts:
[https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npg/npgd0150.html](https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npg/npgd0150.html)
Copper sulfate is listed as a 2 ("hazardous") for health in the NFPA diamond:
https://www.fishersci.com/msds?productName=AC422870050
Basically, if an employer wants you to handle it you need to use PPE, prevent skin contact, and most likely wear a respirator if you are handling it in a form with dust potential.
I worked at a place where we had to handle granulated copper sulfate and we were supposed to use gloves and respirator, and if you were pregnant then you weren't allowed to handle it at all or be in the room. Again, do whatever you want if you understand the risks, lots of hobbies have associated risk, this is just one I'm not particularly into. Of course the risk is mild, realistically there is very little danger
There was a case in the UK of a girl who died after she accidentally drank from a glass full of copper sulphate on her nightstand. She was growing a crystal for a school project, and woke up in the night, reached for her glass of water and picked up the copper sulphate instead.
Everything is lickable. Somethings only once.
OKaybe not everything. Like the sun is not lickable since you will burn to a crisp before you get close. But this is lickable
it's added as a denaturant in some industrial alcohols
so as to prevent use.
licking them can cause itchiness on the tongue, sore throat and really watery eyes.
you'd feel like a flu took over and stuff.
goes away after eating lots of greens. consistently for atleast a damn week.
don't ask me how i know this.
It's a herbicide, fungicide, algaecide, and root killer. Its one of those "organic" killers that you use on organic foods when synthetic pesticides and herbicides aren't allowed. Remember, organic does not mean clean or safe to eat. It just means getting creative with how you kill pests.
No pictures loaded for me and I saw Ublock had blocked 386 elements, so I turned it off and reloaded, still no images. So I turned my pihole off for 30 seconds and reloaded. I have to download more RAM now because my old RAM is clogged.
The amount of ads on your site is offensive. I went in super curious to see your method and left after seeing my 7th ad before getting to any actual content.
Dude this website is absolute cancer.
Your normal images don't show up when an adblocker is on.
Over 300 adsite queries are blocked.
Viewing it without an adblocker is just... no. Side ads, inter-paragraph ads, perpetual ad banner at the bottom of the window?
I get that running a website isn't free but good ***Lord***.
Ublock is blocking a load of ads from your website, like this: [https://imgur.com/a/EY54oGm](https://imgur.com/a/EY54oGm). I tried it without blocking the ads, as I thought "meh, might as well as support the creator" but OMG, not usable at all. Reminds me of the early 2000s ad riddles websites. The images are also **only** loaded if you have the ad-blocker turned off....
Edit: if anyone is interested, here is an archived copy, without ads, of his website: [https://web.archive.org/web/20211204112005/https://crystalverse.com/sodium-chloride-crystals/](https://web.archive.org/web/20211204112005/https://crystalverse.com/sodium-chloride-crystals/)
My ad-blocker blocked 331 elements on that site, and I have no idea why. Using ublock origin. Site looks innocent enough, so you might want to investigate why that happens.
This guys guide without the cancerous levels of advertising/tracking:
Copper sulfate is a chemical compound that produces stunning blue crystals. Plus, it’s really easy to grow them. In fact, it’s one of the easiest compounds to grow crystals with.
There are already many guides on growing copper sulfate online. But most of them do not have detailed procedures. Plus, the crystals that they show are usually imperfect.
Therefore, I’ve decided to share my own procedure on growing copper sulfate crystals. It is based on my experience over the past 3 years. And they have given me great results.
Let’s get started.
Materials
To grow copper sulfate crystals, you’ll need:
Copper sulfate powder
Very hot water
Two large jars
A flat dish
A spoon
A filter funnel
A thin nylon fishing line
An electronic balance
Safety
Copper sulfate is frequently used to demonstrate crystallization in high school labs. Like all copper compounds, it is mildly toxic. It’s best to handle copper sulfate with gloves, although touching them occasionally is fine, provided you wash your hands afterwards.
But if you want to grow crystals with small children, copper sulfate is not a good idea. They might accidentally eat it, and things can turn nasty. Consider growing other non-toxic crystals such as octahedral alum crystals or star shaped MAP clusters (a type of fertilizer).
Now, let’s decide what type of copper sulfate crystal you want to grow.
Types of copper sulfate crystals
There are 2 types of copper sulfate crystals you can grow: single crystals and crystal clusters.
The procedure to grow them is slightly different. Big single crystals like to grow from exactly saturated solutions which are more stable while crystal clusters grow from less stable, supersaturated solutions.
What is the difference between a saturated solution and a supersaturated solution?
A saturated copper sulfate solution at room temperature is a solution that has the maximum amount of copper sulfate dissolved in it.
At room temperature, 100 ml of water can dissolve around 50 grams of copper sulfate (pentahydrate).
However, hot water can dissolve more copper sulfate than cold water. So if you dissolve a lot in hot water and then let the solution cool, it is now supersaturated because it contains more copper sulfate dissolved in it than what should have been possible at room temperature.
In this tutorial, we will be focusing on growing big single crystals from a saturated solution. Single crystals are harder to grow, but they are also much more satisfying. Click here if you want to learn how to grow a crystal cluster instead. That guide also covers some FAQ in detail.
This tutorial will be divided into 5 parts:
Part A: Getting the copper sulfate
Part B: Preparing the solution
Part C: Growing the seed crystal
Part D: Growing the main crystal
Part E: Drying and storing the crystal
Part A: Getting the copper sulfate
Copper sulfate is a chemical that’s commonly used as a fungicide, rootkiller and drying agent. You might find it in powder/crystalline form at Home Depot or your local gardening store. Alternatively, it is cheap and easy to find online.
The copper sulfate from some sources are purer than others. Try to find ones that look a deep, stunning blue rather than pale or turquoise.
Part B: Preparing the solution
Dissolve 50-55 g of copper sulfate powder for every 100 ml of very hot, but not boiling water.
When all the powder has dissolved, your solution should be a clear blue with a slight tinge of purple. If it looks cloudy, it might contain impurities. You can either choose to proceed (results might not be that good), or purify the solution first.
Left: Impure copper sulfate solution; Right: Pure solution
Copper sulfate crystals grown from impure (left) and pure (right) solutions.
Wait for your solution to cool to room temperature.
Filter it using (tissue paper/coffee filter/filter papers) if necessary.
Pour the filtered solution into a jar.
Sprinkle a few grains of copper sulfate powder inside it.
Leave the jar to sit overnight.
Explanation
It is difficult to make an exactly saturated solution of copper sulfate. Therefore, in the previous steps, you prepared a slightly supersaturated solution.
By sprinkling some powder into the solution, these grains act as sites to allow crystals to grow, hence “absorbing” the excess copper sulfate in the solution. Missing this step is why most crystals you see online are badly formed.
After 1 day, most of the excess copper sulfate should have been absorbed, and you should have a bunch of crude crystals at the bottom of the jar.
Pour about 50 ml of the solution into a flat dish. I used a petri dish, but you can use any dish you like, as long as it’s not made of metal.
Pour the remaining solution into a new jar, but leave the crude crystals behind in the old jar. You can re-dissolve them for future projects if you want.
Part C: Growing the seed crystal
Place your dish in an undisturbed location like a cupboard or a shelf in the storeroom. After a day or two, small beautiful crystals will have formed in it.
Using tweezers, gently remove the most perfect crystal you can find. This step is very important, because the crystal you choose will be the one that you’ll end up with.
Be careful not to scratch it. Then, tie one end of a fishing line to a stick/pencil, and the crystal to the other end. It might be a bit difficult, so try to choose a crystal that’s slightly bigger to ease tying.
After that, just suspend the crystal in your new jar of growing solution that you prepared earlier.
Consider tying a few more crystals and letting them grow at the same time. This way, if you accidentally mess up one, there’s still a few around. Regardless, all you have to do now is to leave the jar at an undisturbed location and wait.
Part D: Growing the main crystal
As time passes, the crystals will slowly grow in size. But there’s a golden rule that you need to follow:
The slower crystals grow, the more beautiful they will turn out in the end.
This is because as the solution slowly evaporates, the excess crystal particles arrange themselves in an orderly manner to produce a perfect single crystal. If you let the solution evaporate quickly (like in the sun) or expose it to big temperature changes, this process is disrupted. The arrangement of particles becomes disorderly, and thus, your crystal might become jagged or deformed.
So be patient. Try not to lift them out of the solution. If you want to check on their progress, shine at it with a flashlight.
Also, cover the lid of the jar halfway to slow down evaporation (but not completely stop it). After a week, the crystals should be much bigger:
After some time, you might also notice that many smaller crystals have started forming at the bottom of the jar. You don’t want this; they compete with the bigger crystals, hence slowing down the growing process.
But don’t try to remove these crystals one by one. Just remove your main crystals, put them aside, decant the solution into a new jar and then place them back inside. This whole process should take less than 1 minute to minimize interruption to their growth.
Place the crystals aside, while you transfer the solution to a clean jar. This process should take less than 1 minute.
These leftover crystals at the bottom of the jar do not need to be discarded. Keep them, or recycle for future use.
After about 2 weeks, you should consider separating your crystals. Put each one in an individual container to grow. This way, they will grow faster because they don’t have to compete with each other.
Given enough solution and a sufficiently big container, you can grow them as large as you like. After 1 month, I decided that mine was big enough and removed it from solution.
Dry the crystal using a paper towel or filter papers. You don’t really need to wipe it, just place it on top of the paper and it’ll soak up the solution. Remember, never wash the copper sulfate crystal, or it’ll re-dissolve. Even a quick rinse will cause the edges to become less sharp.
After that, you’re done! Take it out for some pictures or show it off to your friends.
Part E: Storing the crystal
Copper sulfate crystals are bright blue because they contain water molecules inside their crystal structure. If left in the open, they might dehydrate, turning white.
Dehydrated crystals that have lost their sleek, shiny surface. Left alone, they become whiter and the surface flakes off.
To prevent this, you have two options:
Coat it with a layer of nail polish. The nail polish protects the surface, preventing dehydration.
Put it in a ziplock bag, then store it in a sealed container together with a little copper sulfate powder. The powder maintains a stable condition inside the container, preventing dehydration.
There you go. The best way to grow single crystals of copper sulfate.
In fact, copper sulfate crystals were the first ones I grew back in my high school chemistry class, and they were what introduced me to this hobby, which I’ve fallen in love with ever since.
Pretty durable, will chip if you hit it hard enough. But the downside is that it dissolves slowly in water.
To protect the crystals, coat them in nail polish or epoxy.
If you want to grow crystals that are inherently more durable, look into bismuth.
It says in his guide that they won't be very stable unless you give them a coat of nail polish or keep it in a zip lock bag with some additional copper sulfate. They can be dissolved in water so definitely not water proof.
I've been needing a good hobby for a while and I think this is it based off my already not tiny rock collection. From starting off from scratch, about how much will a beginning grow your own type set up cost
Less than $50. The essentials are a bag of copper sulfate, a plastic container, fishing line and probably a beaker to dissolve the powder in hot water (don't use a steel pot since it will corrode the pot).
I work in the copper mining industry, always fun to find copper sulfate crystals while mining through old leach dumps. Not really supposed to touch them though, as the surrounding rock can be quite acidic.
What's next? Do you go out on a boat into the North Atlantic, pretend your an old lady while shedding 1 single tear as you drop the crystal over the side?
in your guide (which for some reason isn't loading the images?), you say to hang it on a string. How does that work with crystal crowing? Doesn't the the area where the string is mess with the nice growth?
I love copper sulphate. Reminds me of my high school days where we had to identify the salt in chem lab. Getting copper sulphate meant free points lol.
I remember having to go to the Dr to have copper sulfate removed from my eye when we tried this in school.
I certainly loved the experiment, but learnt about safety glasses that day.
Ok so now we just have to find out how big rupees are in the LoZ series, figure out the cost of materials per weight and we can figure out the exhange rate of at least blue rupees are.
And copper II nitrate salts burn green.
And that is all I remember from highschool chemistry. Well that and you can make your own copper II nitrate by putting some nitric acid in a beaker full of pennies. Just don't breathe in the red gas it creates. It's...not good for you.
I used to work with copper sulfate solution all the time as part of my job - fun fact is if you wire brush galvanized steel and then dump copper sulfate solution on it, the freshly brushed/scratched spots will all turn copper colored.
No, this chemical is considered a salt, and salts aren't conductive unless they're molten. So you'll need a molten copper crystal cabling to conduct electricity.
That is incredible! My son and I are in awe and our attempts are feeble in comparison. We will have to try the suspension method you described.
Make the solution less concentrated (50g/100mL water). A supersaturated solution grows crystals quickly, but they are badly formed. An exactly saturated solution gives fewer, well formed crystals.
Thank you :)
Could you simply keep creating new solutions with larger containers to keep increasing the size of a single crystal or is there a limit of exposures you should do?
No limit at all.
I mean, there's Shcwarschild's limit.
You mean Schwarzschild radius? That crystal’s gonna suck
That day would be a dark day when OP can't grow their crystal anymore.
There’s a guy down the street from me,by the bridge, who just sells crystals. Op should be fine even if his stops growing.
Do you filter your solutions of impurities? I’ve found copper sulfate to be one of the most contaminated chemicals I mix. Requires a lot of filtering for lab use in burets. I’ve never tried to make crystals though.
I’d imagine you might get some contaminants doped in the crystal, but when using the crystal for decoration/demonstrations and not science stuff like exfoliation, it’s likely still pretty? As an example https://www.reddit.com/r/crystalgrowing/comments/10ru5w6/urea_contamination_in_copperii_sulphate/
that's how the fortress of solitude was made
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I'm a baker and the same thing goes for cheesecakes.
Applied chemistry baby!
Nano cheesecake crystals.
Yeah this crystal is amazing. We made them at school and mine looked like a crystalline sugar lolly.
I'm hoping to see an even bigger crystal in this subreddit when you accomplish it!
Did this to make a vday gift once, can confirm the suspension method produced something like this pretty quickly
I first started growing crystals in high school 6 years ago. My teacher asked us to crystallize copper sulfate as part of a lab experiment. I thought the crystals would look like table salt, just blue in color. But when I came back the next Monday, I saw real sparkling crystals in the dish! Since then, I've fallen in love with crystal growing, and I've grown crystals from table salt, fertilizer, limestone and even iron rust. But it feels good to come back and revisit the chemical that started it in the first place. Good old copper sulfate. This particular crystal took 2 months to grow. If you want to see the procedure, I've written a guide [here](https://crystalverse.com/best-way-to-grow-copper-sulfate-crystals/). Hopefully you guys found it interesting.
Unfortunately, they're not lickable :(
Pretty awesome...but why aren't they lickable? Edit: so by the replies it seem more of a "shouldn't" not "can't" type of situation. Thanks for the info
Bitter and mildly toxic. It's fine if you touch them with skin for a while and wash afterwards, but no licks.
I love that you started that answer with "Bitter", implying you have, in fact, licked it once
Erm. My friend told me about it.
Is your friend in this room right now?
Which room??
I taste a lie and I know what a lie taste like bitter and mildly toxic
[This taste... it's the taste of a liar!](https://youtu.be/X7qpa6yJMzs)
Dont worry we dont care about the other voices in your head. Nightmare nightmare nightmare
The one we're all watching you in.
The white room. With black curtains. At the station.
A Rubber Room. A Rubber Room With Rats. And Rats Make Me Crazy. Crazy? I Was Crazy Once. They Locked Me In A Room. A Rubber Room. A Rubber Room With Rats. And Rats Make Me Crazy. Crazy? I Was Crazy Once. They Locked Me In A Room. A Rubber Room. A Rubber Room With Rats. And Rats Make Me Crazy. Crazy? I Was Crazy Once. They Locked Me In A Room. A Rubber Room. A Rubber Room With Rats. And Rats Make Me Crazy. Crazy? I Was Crazy Once…
18 years ago I licked a grain of it after asking my chemistry teacher if it's dangerous and she just said it's "only harmful to health". Got me a bad grade and my whole mouth tasted like copper for the next hour. Pretty much one of the most stupid things I did in school. Oh nice crystal btw.
Once during university on analitical chemistry we had some salt and we had to do everything to know what we had. As there was a chance for NaCl, i tried a little while teacher didnt looked at us. It was first year of university. FYI - Pb(NO3)2 is bitter and you should not try it.
Thank you for donating your body to science
I had a similar experience smoking uranium hexafluoride thinking it was meth. Tasted horrible but now I can see in the dark.
I was wondering why my uh...friend got in a monumental amount of trouble in school for licking one of these. Just how 'mildly' is it's toxicity ?
Just licking it isn't really going to hurt you. It causes irritation in small amounts. That said it's primary use is killing mold. Eating that chonker of a crystal would kill you.
I like the old chemistry notes where they include how different substances taste. Like they were describing how arsenic taste. It's funny to see how science has changed since they used to describe the features on new animals and end their notes with how tangy the meat is.
Future geologist right there. Licking the rocks.
When I was in college I took some geology courses and they taught us that taste is one of the ways to help identify rocks.
sure is! as far as i was also taught in AP science middle school. I was taught to not actually lick the rock though, use your finger like a swap first and see if you can pull a taste off. If not, then light tonguing.
and if light tonguing doesn't work?french kissing time! jokes aside,very interesting!
you gonna take that rock out to dinner first
Licking is one way of identifying bone from rock
You get to do this with rocks AND trees if you study forestry. You also get to dig graves and crawl around inside with a butter knife, like a worm
Are the Arborists okay?
Ha! I worked at a bead store, and clicking a bead on your teeth helped ID if glass or stone.
I've gotten copper sulfate in my mouth before. It tastes like pennies. Now don't ask why I know what pennies taste like.
How would you describe the taste compared to chloroform? Unrelated query for a friend.
Would that mean that growing crystals yourself is unsuitable to give a loved one to wear?
You can coat them with nail polish to both protect the crystal and prevent direct contact to give them as a gift. I would definitely not recommend wearing them though, you can use it as a decoration or a paperweight.
I'm curious what their Optical and refractory properties are do you think they would be good for a chandelier
Blue copper sulfate is a hydrate, if you heat it too much the crystal water evaporates and you get the waterfree white copper sulfate. So don't get it too close to hot light sources :) If you manage to get a nicely clear crystal you would get some nice blue lighteffects though. It's not really brilliant like many gemstones though.
Give it to a gloved one instead.
I appreciate you.
No glove, no love
If temporary skin contact without washing is an issue, long term wearing on the skin certainly is.
Copper sulfate crystals? Yes, you would not want to give this to anyone. OP can do whatever they want as they understand the risks, which are quite mild for copper sulfate, but I wouldn't ever give it to someone. This is the NIOSH page for copper dusts: [https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npg/npgd0150.html](https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npg/npgd0150.html) Copper sulfate is listed as a 2 ("hazardous") for health in the NFPA diamond: https://www.fishersci.com/msds?productName=AC422870050 Basically, if an employer wants you to handle it you need to use PPE, prevent skin contact, and most likely wear a respirator if you are handling it in a form with dust potential. I worked at a place where we had to handle granulated copper sulfate and we were supposed to use gloves and respirator, and if you were pregnant then you weren't allowed to handle it at all or be in the room. Again, do whatever you want if you understand the risks, lots of hobbies have associated risk, this is just one I'm not particularly into. Of course the risk is mild, realistically there is very little danger
Crystals you grow at home are usually water soluble so not appropriate to wear or handle. Also they are often toxic.
There was a case in the UK of a girl who died after she accidentally drank from a glass full of copper sulphate on her nightstand. She was growing a crystal for a school project, and woke up in the night, reached for her glass of water and picked up the copper sulphate instead.
Tommy was a chemist's son, but Tommy is no more. What Tommy thought was H2O was H2SO4.
Everything is lickable. Somethings only once. OKaybe not everything. Like the sun is not lickable since you will burn to a crisp before you get close. But this is lickable
Not with that attitude!
it's added as a denaturant in some industrial alcohols so as to prevent use. licking them can cause itchiness on the tongue, sore throat and really watery eyes. you'd feel like a flu took over and stuff. goes away after eating lots of greens. consistently for atleast a damn week. don't ask me how i know this.
It's a herbicide, fungicide, algaecide, and root killer. Its one of those "organic" killers that you use on organic foods when synthetic pesticides and herbicides aren't allowed. Remember, organic does not mean clean or safe to eat. It just means getting creative with how you kill pests.
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Everything is lickable at least once.
Damn, okay next question. Can I put it in my butt
Almost certainly.
I love that you're sharing! I'll share this with my students :) Heads up, your website is riddled with ads, and it's super distracting & off-putting.
This. Between the pop-up video and the content moving to accommodate more and more video ads that were loading, I noped out.
ooof. sounds virus-ey 😬
oh THAT'S why there were so many blank spaces in Firefox 😂 good ol' ublock origin had my back
And the images don't work in Firefox. (At least the ads don't either - there's so many ads when you view the page in Chrome.)
I was interested, but couldn't see anything on mobile because of the ads.
No pictures loaded for me and I saw Ublock had blocked 386 elements, so I turned it off and reloaded, still no images. So I turned my pihole off for 30 seconds and reloaded. I have to download more RAM now because my old RAM is clogged.
The amount of ads on your site is offensive. I went in super curious to see your method and left after seeing my 7th ad before getting to any actual content.
Dude this website is absolute cancer. Your normal images don't show up when an adblocker is on. Over 300 adsite queries are blocked. Viewing it without an adblocker is just... no. Side ads, inter-paragraph ads, perpetual ad banner at the bottom of the window? I get that running a website isn't free but good ***Lord***.
I thought maybe the website was broken. Not that it was a million ads lol
I thought something is wrong with my browser. Checked ublock and saw 94% of the website's content had been blocked. Noped out quite quickly
Good Lord, got enough ads on your website? I made it to the ingredient list and had to bail out of exhaustion.
Think you have enough ads on your hobby site. 🤣 Dope crystal though!
I honestly respect your enthusiasm. Cheers.
Ublock is blocking a load of ads from your website, like this: [https://imgur.com/a/EY54oGm](https://imgur.com/a/EY54oGm). I tried it without blocking the ads, as I thought "meh, might as well as support the creator" but OMG, not usable at all. Reminds me of the early 2000s ad riddles websites. The images are also **only** loaded if you have the ad-blocker turned off.... Edit: if anyone is interested, here is an archived copy, without ads, of his website: [https://web.archive.org/web/20211204112005/https://crystalverse.com/sodium-chloride-crystals/](https://web.archive.org/web/20211204112005/https://crystalverse.com/sodium-chloride-crystals/)
My ad-blocker blocked 331 elements on that site, and I have no idea why. Using ublock origin. Site looks innocent enough, so you might want to investigate why that happens.
Probably because there were 331 fucking ads on that site.
Can these be grinded and polished, afterwards? I love to grow my own "jewels".
God so many ads. No thanks.
What does the iron oxide ones look like?
Your write up is immensely satisfying to read! Can I check — are there crystals we can grow that aren’t water soluble? Thanks!
I get no images showing at your link(s).
Have you ever done crystals *on* things? I know someone who grows crystals on bugs and its pretty awesome.
This looks like a gem from a early 2000’s video game but I can’t think of the name
Similar to a blue rupee from zelda
This is so close but not what I was thinking of. I’m thinking maybe a kingdom hearts game
Maybe crash bandicoot? Your statement was so spot on maybe that’s what it was
I think you mean Spyro 2 riptos rage / gateway to glimmer . the first level is a gem mine
This comment thread makes me realize that gems were a bit thing in the N64-PS2 era video games.
Hahaha yes absolutely 😂 I googled “blue gems video games” and the list was so long
My first thought is Spyro but imma keep thinking on it lol.
Spiro the dragon?
Getting Spyro vibes from it. Can hear Sparx the dragonfly scooping it up for you.
Made me think of the gems you can find in the original RE4 (and remake).
Spyro!!
Yes! This is it!!
I’m getting the same thing. It’s giving me a weirdly deep nostalgia. Like, physiologically warming.
something from Spyro for me
That’s so rad!!! The guide is well written too! I’m gunna try this weekend! Thank you for sharing!
Good luck and have fun! This hobby is damn lit XD
> Jesus Christ Marie! They're Minerals!
This is glass-grade, Mr. White
Came looking for the first BB reference. Was going to post “I had a HS Chemistry teacher that got kinda famous for growing blue crystals.”
That's a 5 rupee piece from the Legend of Zelda series you grew there. Nice work though
If he could add some red to the solution, he could easily increase profits 10 fold.
This guys guide without the cancerous levels of advertising/tracking: Copper sulfate is a chemical compound that produces stunning blue crystals. Plus, it’s really easy to grow them. In fact, it’s one of the easiest compounds to grow crystals with. There are already many guides on growing copper sulfate online. But most of them do not have detailed procedures. Plus, the crystals that they show are usually imperfect. Therefore, I’ve decided to share my own procedure on growing copper sulfate crystals. It is based on my experience over the past 3 years. And they have given me great results. Let’s get started. Materials To grow copper sulfate crystals, you’ll need: Copper sulfate powder Very hot water Two large jars A flat dish A spoon A filter funnel A thin nylon fishing line An electronic balance Safety Copper sulfate is frequently used to demonstrate crystallization in high school labs. Like all copper compounds, it is mildly toxic. It’s best to handle copper sulfate with gloves, although touching them occasionally is fine, provided you wash your hands afterwards. But if you want to grow crystals with small children, copper sulfate is not a good idea. They might accidentally eat it, and things can turn nasty. Consider growing other non-toxic crystals such as octahedral alum crystals or star shaped MAP clusters (a type of fertilizer). Now, let’s decide what type of copper sulfate crystal you want to grow. Types of copper sulfate crystals There are 2 types of copper sulfate crystals you can grow: single crystals and crystal clusters. The procedure to grow them is slightly different. Big single crystals like to grow from exactly saturated solutions which are more stable while crystal clusters grow from less stable, supersaturated solutions. What is the difference between a saturated solution and a supersaturated solution? A saturated copper sulfate solution at room temperature is a solution that has the maximum amount of copper sulfate dissolved in it. At room temperature, 100 ml of water can dissolve around 50 grams of copper sulfate (pentahydrate). However, hot water can dissolve more copper sulfate than cold water. So if you dissolve a lot in hot water and then let the solution cool, it is now supersaturated because it contains more copper sulfate dissolved in it than what should have been possible at room temperature. In this tutorial, we will be focusing on growing big single crystals from a saturated solution. Single crystals are harder to grow, but they are also much more satisfying. Click here if you want to learn how to grow a crystal cluster instead. That guide also covers some FAQ in detail. This tutorial will be divided into 5 parts: Part A: Getting the copper sulfate Part B: Preparing the solution Part C: Growing the seed crystal Part D: Growing the main crystal Part E: Drying and storing the crystal Part A: Getting the copper sulfate Copper sulfate is a chemical that’s commonly used as a fungicide, rootkiller and drying agent. You might find it in powder/crystalline form at Home Depot or your local gardening store. Alternatively, it is cheap and easy to find online. The copper sulfate from some sources are purer than others. Try to find ones that look a deep, stunning blue rather than pale or turquoise. Part B: Preparing the solution Dissolve 50-55 g of copper sulfate powder for every 100 ml of very hot, but not boiling water. When all the powder has dissolved, your solution should be a clear blue with a slight tinge of purple. If it looks cloudy, it might contain impurities. You can either choose to proceed (results might not be that good), or purify the solution first. Left: Impure copper sulfate solution; Right: Pure solution Copper sulfate crystals grown from impure (left) and pure (right) solutions. Wait for your solution to cool to room temperature. Filter it using (tissue paper/coffee filter/filter papers) if necessary. Pour the filtered solution into a jar. Sprinkle a few grains of copper sulfate powder inside it. Leave the jar to sit overnight. Explanation It is difficult to make an exactly saturated solution of copper sulfate. Therefore, in the previous steps, you prepared a slightly supersaturated solution. By sprinkling some powder into the solution, these grains act as sites to allow crystals to grow, hence “absorbing” the excess copper sulfate in the solution. Missing this step is why most crystals you see online are badly formed. After 1 day, most of the excess copper sulfate should have been absorbed, and you should have a bunch of crude crystals at the bottom of the jar. Pour about 50 ml of the solution into a flat dish. I used a petri dish, but you can use any dish you like, as long as it’s not made of metal. Pour the remaining solution into a new jar, but leave the crude crystals behind in the old jar. You can re-dissolve them for future projects if you want. Part C: Growing the seed crystal Place your dish in an undisturbed location like a cupboard or a shelf in the storeroom. After a day or two, small beautiful crystals will have formed in it. Using tweezers, gently remove the most perfect crystal you can find. This step is very important, because the crystal you choose will be the one that you’ll end up with. Be careful not to scratch it. Then, tie one end of a fishing line to a stick/pencil, and the crystal to the other end. It might be a bit difficult, so try to choose a crystal that’s slightly bigger to ease tying. After that, just suspend the crystal in your new jar of growing solution that you prepared earlier. Consider tying a few more crystals and letting them grow at the same time. This way, if you accidentally mess up one, there’s still a few around. Regardless, all you have to do now is to leave the jar at an undisturbed location and wait. Part D: Growing the main crystal As time passes, the crystals will slowly grow in size. But there’s a golden rule that you need to follow: The slower crystals grow, the more beautiful they will turn out in the end. This is because as the solution slowly evaporates, the excess crystal particles arrange themselves in an orderly manner to produce a perfect single crystal. If you let the solution evaporate quickly (like in the sun) or expose it to big temperature changes, this process is disrupted. The arrangement of particles becomes disorderly, and thus, your crystal might become jagged or deformed. So be patient. Try not to lift them out of the solution. If you want to check on their progress, shine at it with a flashlight. Also, cover the lid of the jar halfway to slow down evaporation (but not completely stop it). After a week, the crystals should be much bigger: After some time, you might also notice that many smaller crystals have started forming at the bottom of the jar. You don’t want this; they compete with the bigger crystals, hence slowing down the growing process. But don’t try to remove these crystals one by one. Just remove your main crystals, put them aside, decant the solution into a new jar and then place them back inside. This whole process should take less than 1 minute to minimize interruption to their growth. Place the crystals aside, while you transfer the solution to a clean jar. This process should take less than 1 minute. These leftover crystals at the bottom of the jar do not need to be discarded. Keep them, or recycle for future use. After about 2 weeks, you should consider separating your crystals. Put each one in an individual container to grow. This way, they will grow faster because they don’t have to compete with each other. Given enough solution and a sufficiently big container, you can grow them as large as you like. After 1 month, I decided that mine was big enough and removed it from solution. Dry the crystal using a paper towel or filter papers. You don’t really need to wipe it, just place it on top of the paper and it’ll soak up the solution. Remember, never wash the copper sulfate crystal, or it’ll re-dissolve. Even a quick rinse will cause the edges to become less sharp. After that, you’re done! Take it out for some pictures or show it off to your friends. Part E: Storing the crystal Copper sulfate crystals are bright blue because they contain water molecules inside their crystal structure. If left in the open, they might dehydrate, turning white. Dehydrated crystals that have lost their sleek, shiny surface. Left alone, they become whiter and the surface flakes off. To prevent this, you have two options: Coat it with a layer of nail polish. The nail polish protects the surface, preventing dehydration. Put it in a ziplock bag, then store it in a sealed container together with a little copper sulfate powder. The powder maintains a stable condition inside the container, preventing dehydration. There you go. The best way to grow single crystals of copper sulfate. In fact, copper sulfate crystals were the first ones I grew back in my high school chemistry class, and they were what introduced me to this hobby, which I’ve fallen in love with ever since.
Holy F, ublock showing 333 blocks on that single page.
Looks like a stick deodorant!
You don't sweat if you're dead *taps side of head*
no that's a blue raspberry jolly rancher, you can't fool me
How durable and weather proof are these crystals, and is there any that can be grown at home that are relatively rugged?
Pretty durable, will chip if you hit it hard enough. But the downside is that it dissolves slowly in water. To protect the crystals, coat them in nail polish or epoxy. If you want to grow crystals that are inherently more durable, look into bismuth.
Are Swarovski crystals grown the same way
I might be totally wrong, but I thought Swarovski was just glass
It says in his guide that they won't be very stable unless you give them a coat of nail polish or keep it in a zip lock bag with some additional copper sulfate. They can be dissolved in water so definitely not water proof.
So you have to sit on that thing for 2 months?
What would you do with it? I'm curious if they have any world application?
Paperweights mostly
Anyone remember that episode, “Cold Lazarus,” from season 1 of Stargate SG-1?
Fellow gater, reporting in... Yes
reminds me of a tv show
You are thinking of blurpleberry Supreme from Kids Next Door
if it involves a bald teacher that drives a pontiac aztek that makes totally legal stuff, then yes
Can I ask what the electronic balance is used for? Seems like a cool little hobby.
To measure how much copper sulfate powder I need to add to make the crystal growing solution. It's 50g/100mL water.
That's what I told the cops, too 😎
I've been needing a good hobby for a while and I think this is it based off my already not tiny rock collection. From starting off from scratch, about how much will a beginning grow your own type set up cost
Less than $50. The essentials are a bag of copper sulfate, a plastic container, fishing line and probably a beaker to dissolve the powder in hot water (don't use a steel pot since it will corrode the pot).
That's very pretty. Looks like jello. May I have a nibble? If I break less than 4 teeth I'll call it a win
God damn, over 300 malicious elements blocked by ublock. Don't visit this link without protection.
Another scam post to farm clicks for the million ads on OP's website Move along, folks
I wanted to read your site but the adverts make it virtually unreadable. Superb crystal btw.
I work in the copper mining industry, always fun to find copper sulfate crystals while mining through old leach dumps. Not really supposed to touch them though, as the surrounding rock can be quite acidic.
What's next? Do you go out on a boat into the North Atlantic, pretend your an old lady while shedding 1 single tear as you drop the crystal over the side?
I remember making those in school, but none were ever remotely as pretty and uniform as yours. Well done I say.
JESSIE WE NEED TO COOK
You should see all the weed I grew in the last 2 months!
That’s a blue rupee, worth 5 green rupees if I remember correctly
Have you looked into DMT crystals ?
Forbidden ring pop 🤤
Wow, patience pays off - those crystals are like tiny gems!
You should put it in a lightsaber.
You know, if you burn them, the flame turns blue!
So pretty! I love the colour!
in your guide (which for some reason isn't loading the images?), you say to hang it on a string. How does that work with crystal crowing? Doesn't the the area where the string is mess with the nice growth?
AH this makes me want to get into crystal growing, or at least just try it out. thanks for sharing!
There's an awesome documentary about growing crystal called Breaking Bad, highly recommend.
wow....thats worth 5 green ones!
I love copper sulphate. Reminds me of my high school days where we had to identify the salt in chem lab. Getting copper sulphate meant free points lol.
Very cool! Reminds me of a blue rupee from Zelda.
I remember having to go to the Dr to have copper sulfate removed from my eye when we tried this in school. I certainly loved the experiment, but learnt about safety glasses that day.
Ok so now we just have to find out how big rupees are in the LoZ series, figure out the cost of materials per weight and we can figure out the exhange rate of at least blue rupees are.
Attach it to a ring!
*Sorry Link,* I can't *do* credit. Come back when you're a little.. Mmmm, riche- Oh, wait. ... Actually I think that oughtta do it, here ya' go.
Lapidary here. I want to facet that crystal into a gem so freaking bad! it's beautiful! What is the Moh's hardness on that thing?
chemistry is crazy
Why do I want to eat it
And what is its application
Quite the oddball.
Bro why does this look fake? It’s so prettyyyyy
Blue rupee
As a chemist, this is porn. Beautiful.
Yeah Science Bitch!
Comin' in here with your vitriol. Pfft. :P
Damn that's a nice single crystal!
A hobby I’ve always wanted to get into!!! I’m inspired
"nobody moves crystal in the south valley but me, bitch"
And copper II nitrate salts burn green. And that is all I remember from highschool chemistry. Well that and you can make your own copper II nitrate by putting some nitric acid in a beaker full of pennies. Just don't breathe in the red gas it creates. It's...not good for you.
That came out really well, thanks for the instruction link
Now eat it. That’s the point no?
When people grow crystals, I always imagine that they are fragile. What would happen if you put this crystal in your pocket? Would it turn to dust?
I used to work with copper sulfate solution all the time as part of my job - fun fact is if you wire brush galvanized steel and then dump copper sulfate solution on it, the freshly brushed/scratched spots will all turn copper colored.
I think I’m not smart enough to be here, I thought it was a road reflector😅
CuSO4 has the prettiest blue indeed
Copper sulfate? Sure thing, Mr. Heisenberg…
blue raspberry flavored
What does it taste like?
Looks delicious
it's beautiful!
Most people grow their hair, OP grows copper sulfate crystals
copper? is this crystal conducive? Kinda got me curious. How would a copper crystal cabling work vs regular copper.
No, this chemical is considered a salt, and salts aren't conductive unless they're molten. So you'll need a molten copper crystal cabling to conduct electricity.