week 1: CRYSTAL SNOWFLAKES

I'm kicking off 52 Weeks of GUST with my personal favorite experiment from when I was a kid! This is my go-to experiment for small groups; while it is fairly straightforward, it requires a lot of adult assistance, especially with younger kids. However, nothing can beat the end product -- try out this experiment and see it for yourself!

Materials: 

• String
• Paper cup or mason jar
• Pencil
• White pipe cleaners
• Boiling water
• Borax

Directions:

1. Fold your pipe cleaner into three equal segments. Cut along the two folds, so that you now have three smaller pipe cleaner pieces. Twist the sections in their centers, so that you have a rough snowflake shape with six points. If the points are not of uniform length, then feel free to trim them down until they are. (Take note that the shape should be small enough to fit inside your cup.)
2. Tie the string to one point of your pipe cleaner snowflake shape. Attach the other end of the string to the center of the pencil. The string should be long enough so that the snowflake can dangle in the jar when the pencil is placed over it.
3. Pour the boiling water in the jar. Add borax; for each cup of water, there should be three tablespoons of borax. Stir gently until most of the granules are dissolved.
4. Now it is time to place the snowflake inside the jar, resting the pencil over the rim of the cup. The snowflake should be dangling within the mixture, not collapsed at the bottom of the jar. If your string turns out to be too long, you can loop it around the pencil once more.
5. It's time for some patience -- leave your jar overnight in a room temperature environment. When you come back to it in about 24 hours, you will find that the snowflake is now officially crystallized!
6. Enjoy your finished product; you can hang it in your room, gift it to family or friends, or use it as an ornament!

What's Going On?
Another name for borax is sodium borate, a compound that is easily dissolvable in water (as you have seen from this experiment.) However, dissolving borax in boiling water is different from dissolving it in room temperature or cold water; since water molecules in boiling water move faster and more freely, there is more space for the borax to dissolve.
As the water/borax solution loses heat, these water molecules slow down and are more close together. It can no longer hold the amount of solution that it could when the water was boiling. This is what causes the crystals to build on the pipe cleaner.