How to Grow Salt Crystals at Home (With Salt & Water)

Learn to make your salt crystals at home using table salt and water. Make unique designs and colors using papers and food colors. Observe the square shaped crystals formed out of sodium chloride.

Growing Salt Crystals at Home with just salt (Sodium Chloride) and water is a super fun activity for kids.

We have previously tried some crystal ornaments for Christmas (hearts, snowflakes, candy canes & Snow Man) using Borax.

Unlike Borax, Salt crystal takes few days or up to a week to grow/form. But growing salt crystals is a great way to teach the science behind the salt making.

Growing Salt Crystals at Home

How to make salt crystal

Things We Need

Table Salt (Sodium Chrolide – NaCl)

Warm Water

Plates

Color Papers cut into different shapes (optional)

Food Colors (optional)

Materials Required For Salt Crystal

Process of Making Salt Crystals

Fill your container halfway with warm water. Warm water helps to dissolve the salt quickly.

Add a cup of salt to the warm water and stir it continuously until the salt is completely dissolved. Repeat the process until you cannot get any more salt to dissolve. The final salt solution should not have any residue of salt. This is called a supersaturated salt solution.

Mix Salt with water

Now gently pour the saltwater onto different plates. You may choose to add few drops of food color in your solution to make colored salt crystals.

Cut the Papers to put in salt water

Place the cut papers. Since we targeted to create crystals to make Christmas ornaments – we made a Christmas tree, star, and snowman. But this is completely an optional step. You can even form crystals just on the plate without any papers.

Now we need to place the plates in sunlight. The entire process of salt crystal formation will take about 3 to 4 days, depending upon the room temperature and availability of sunlight.

Put the papers in salt water

Here is our observation for the next consecutive days.

Day 1

The paper is still wet buried in the saturated salt solution. We started seeing a layer of salt crystal that formed on the top of the solution.

Salt crystal experiment First day

Day 2

The salt crystal layer was thickened, and we could see salt crystals evidently on top of the paper and floating later on top of the saturated solution.

Salt crystal experiment Second day

Day 3

Almost all the water from the saturated solution evaporated, leaving behind the crystallized salt. The layer was thick enough to show the crystals formed on top of the immersed paper.

The paper pieces were still wet. So we had to take them out from the plate to dry off completely in sunlight.

Salt crystal experiment Third day

Day 4

You can see Salt crystals formed all over the paper, including the backside. Now the Christmas tree-cutting had a full snowy effect due to salt crystal formation

Salt crystal experiment Fourth day

Science Behind Growing Salt Crystals

Here are some important terms that you need to know before understanding the science behind salt crystals.

Solution: When you mix two or three substances evenly or completely to create a homogenous mixture, that is called a solution.

Solvent: Substance that dissolves the other one (In our experiment – Water is the solvent).

Solute:  Substance that gets dissolved (In our experiment – table salt)

To make a solution, one must dissolve a solute in the solvent. When you put the solute in the solvent, the molecules of those substances run into each other to create the dissolving process. Since these molecules are in constant motion – the solvent molecules bombard with solute molecules.

The dissolving process usually takes more time. To reduce the time taken to form the solution – you have two options:

Keep the plates in sunlight - salt crystal formation

Increase the temperature of the solution.

Try to increase motion between the molecules by stirring the solute and solvent together.

Once the solute is dissolved in solvent – that produces three types of solution:

Unsaturated Solution: The solution which can absorb more solute.

Saturated Solution: Where you can no longer get the solute dissolved anymore.

Super Saturated Solution: It represents a solution that can absorb more solute than in a normal scenario. For example – Warm water can absorb more salt than water at room temperature.

So, let us understand how the Crystallization Process happened to form Salt Crystals:

Once the solute (salt) is dissolved in the solvent (water) – the ionic bonds disassociate themselves to form ions as these ions will then be attracted by the molecules in the solvent (water).

When the solution is let to cool down, the molecules in solvent (water) start bonding together, leaving the ions from salt out of place. These left-out ions create sediment in the paper as well as on the plate. As the water evaporates, the niacin and chlorine atoms bond together as there is no water molecules to separate them. As time passes, more of these fallen molecules of salt bond together to form salt crystals (in cube shapes).

Making Of Christmas Crystal star

Extension Ideas

We have made this a Christmas-themed science project. You can choose your favorite theme. E.g., Try making egg-shaped crystals for easter.

For example, try using different salts – repeat the experiment with sea salt, un-iodized salt, Epsom salt, borax salt, and iodized salt. Check the different shapes of crystals formed.

Change the solvent – instead of tap water, try it with distilled water and observe changes in crystal shapes.

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