This week, two of my classmates and I worked on making bismuth crystals. We learned the process from our teacher of how these crystals can form from just regular metal bismuth. On Tuesday, Andrew showed us process of how to melt the bismuth so the crystals will form. Then on Wednesday and Thursday, we tried making the crystals on our own.
In order to make these crystals, we had to heat the metal bismuth that is placed in a steel cup on a hot plate so they melt. It takes about 20 minutes for the bismuth to fully melt. Once the bismuth is melted, we turned the hot plate off and left the cup of bismuth to cool. When the bismuth is cooling, the crystals are forming. How fast the bismuth cools or any movement when it cools affects how the crystals are formed. The slower the crystals cool the better it is for the crystal and if there is movement, the crystals that are forming might break or might get messed up so you'll end up with small crystals or none at all. After about 15 minutes of cooling, we had to lightly tap the table to check if the crystals are ready. We can tell if the crystals are ready to be removed when the liquid moves. Once it's done. we pour it out into another cup and the remains of the bismuth in the other cup should be the crystals. At this point, everything is super hot and we had to use oven mitts too move stuff around to not burn ourselves. At times some of the crystals came out great and others didn't form as well. One that formed pretty good is shown below and our teacher said it was probably the best one that was made.
For this lab, I worked with Daisy and Ivy. I felt that we worked really well together to produce the bismuth crystals that looked really pretty. We worked together, and kept reminding each other tips and precautions that Andrew told us while we were performing the lab alone.
With this lab, I learned that being patient takes time, and while I am waiting I can occupy myself with other stuff like updating my blog or thinking/coming up with other labs that I could do in the future. After making these crystals, I really want to go around the school and show everyone what I made because it was so cool. My partners and I decided that we're going to go to a craft store to get jewelry making supplies so we can the bismuth crystals as jewelry. What we did with the bismuth crystals that we didn't want, we just remelted them to try to make better crystals. So since we could redo the lab like that, we had multiple tries to get better results.
In order to make these crystals, we had to heat the metal bismuth that is placed in a steel cup on a hot plate so they melt. It takes about 20 minutes for the bismuth to fully melt. Once the bismuth is melted, we turned the hot plate off and left the cup of bismuth to cool. When the bismuth is cooling, the crystals are forming. How fast the bismuth cools or any movement when it cools affects how the crystals are formed. The slower the crystals cool the better it is for the crystal and if there is movement, the crystals that are forming might break or might get messed up so you'll end up with small crystals or none at all. After about 15 minutes of cooling, we had to lightly tap the table to check if the crystals are ready. We can tell if the crystals are ready to be removed when the liquid moves. Once it's done. we pour it out into another cup and the remains of the bismuth in the other cup should be the crystals. At this point, everything is super hot and we had to use oven mitts too move stuff around to not burn ourselves. At times some of the crystals came out great and others didn't form as well. One that formed pretty good is shown below and our teacher said it was probably the best one that was made.
For this lab, I worked with Daisy and Ivy. I felt that we worked really well together to produce the bismuth crystals that looked really pretty. We worked together, and kept reminding each other tips and precautions that Andrew told us while we were performing the lab alone.
With this lab, I learned that being patient takes time, and while I am waiting I can occupy myself with other stuff like updating my blog or thinking/coming up with other labs that I could do in the future. After making these crystals, I really want to go around the school and show everyone what I made because it was so cool. My partners and I decided that we're going to go to a craft store to get jewelry making supplies so we can the bismuth crystals as jewelry. What we did with the bismuth crystals that we didn't want, we just remelted them to try to make better crystals. So since we could redo the lab like that, we had multiple tries to get better results.