For kids, making crystals and playing around with eggshells are always exciting activities. Combining kids’ enthuse towards crystals with simple science activities make them skilful in understanding science concepts in a fun way.
Egg Shell Crystals are easy to make and kids enjoy making them. It teaches kids about chemistry, encourages them to be creative, and gives them a sense of accomplishment. These egg shells can be used in art projects and science projects or for decoration around the house.
The recipe is simple, but the crystal formation process is tricky and can take days. The final product looks incredible when finished and makes a great gift for science enthusiasts or anyone who wants to make a unique gift for a friend or family member.
Materials Needed
1) Empty and Clean Eggshells
2) Hot Water
3) Glasses or glass jars
4) Food Colors
5) Stirring rod or a Spoon
6) Borax
Egg Shell Crystals Experiment Steps
Preparation
To clean the eggshells, use hot water and allow them to settle for a minute. The thin and transparent egg membrane will come off quickly and prevent mold formation during the experiment process.
Step-3: And then, add different colors of food colors of your choice to each glass jar and stir the liquids using a spoon or stirring rod. In this post, we used red, orange, green, and blue.
Step-4: As a fourth step, bring the eggshells and drop them into all the four glass jars filled with borax, hot water, and food color.
Step-5:
- Slowly, let the eggshells submerge into the solution.
- After some time, shift the eggshells from supersaturated solution to a clean plate.
- Let them settle until they get dry and grow crystals.
Step-1: Place the four glass jars side by side on the experiment table and fill them out with hot water.
Step-2: Now, add borax powder into all the glass jars filled with hot water and make it a supersaturated solution. Make sure to add as much borax powder as possible till the solution becomes super saturated (i.e. it cannot take any more borax powder).
Step-3: To the same solution in the glass jar, add a few drops of food color and mix well.
Step-4: Now, place the eggshells and submerge them into the solution for some time. After some time, remove the eggshells from the glass jar and carefully pour the supersaturated solution as full as possible. Make sure the eggshell is not overflowing with the liquid.
Step-5: Let the crystals grow for overnight, you can remove the egg shells the next day and place them carefully onto a suitable surface and let them settle and dry for some time.
That’s it! You are done your part of preparing eggshells to grow crystals.
In the final product, you can see beautiful crystals outside and inside the eggshell groove.
We even tried this with neon colors – these Fluorescent crystals look beautiful in blacklight.
You can use these fluorescent crystalled egg shells in Holloween to make your decoration more spooky 🙂
The science behind Making Egg Shell Crystals
A super-saturated solution is simply a solution containing high amounts of solute, which can dissolve itself under a particular temperature.
In this activity, mixing hot water with borax powder makes a super-saturated solution! Let us see how it is possible! The hot water you are adding possesses energy which allows the salts of borax powder to dissolve completely.
After the solution gets cooled, no energy supports salts to remain in a dissolved state inside the solution. And the salts again start to solid up themselves and grow crystals over the surfaces filled with super-saturated solutions.
Evaporation is an important science concept that helps in growing crystals. As the process of evaporation is slow, it takes a longer time for crystals to grow.
Crystals are solid and rigid substances formed by packing molecules intact in different patterns. As a result, they can shape themselves differently depending on the shape and size of the material they grow.
Checkout how we made a stunning crystall egg shell hat for my daughter’s barbie ! Try yourself and share your result in the comments.
