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Magic Crystal Garden

What You Need

Five charcoal briquets
Hammer
2-quart glass bowl
Clean, empty glass jar
1 tablespoon ammonia
6 tablespoons salt
6 tablespoons of Mrs. Stewart's Liquid Bluing (from the grocery store, or call 1-800-325-7785, or visit http://www.mrsstewart.com)
2 tablespoons water
Food coloring

What to Do
Break up the charcoal briquets into 1-inch chunks with the hammer, and place the pieces in the bottom of the bowl.

In the jar, mix the ammonia, salt, bluing, and water. Mix well.

Pour the mixture over the charcoal in the bowl.

Sprinkle a few drops of food coloring over each piece of charcoal.

Let the bowl sit undisturbed in a safe place for seventy-two hours.

What Happens
Fluffy, fragile crystals form on top of the charcoal, and some climb up the sides of the bowl. To keep the crystals growing, add another batch of ammonia, salt, bluing, and water.

Why It Works
As the ammonia speeds up the evaporation of the water, the blue ion particles in the bluing and the salt get carried up into the porous charcoal, where the salt crystallizes around the blue particles as nuclei. These crystals are porous, like a sponge, and the liquid below continues to move into the openings and evaporate, leaving layers of crystals.

Bizarre Facts

All solids have an orderly pattern of atoms, which is repeated again and again. This orderly pattern, called crystallinity, can be seen in simple crystals because their shapes reveal their particular atomic structure to the naked eye.
Some New Age enthusiasts believe that wearing a crystal—usually an amethyst, rose quartz, or clear quartz—around the neck attracts good vibrations and can be used to better arrange a person's spiritual and physical energies. There is no scientific evidence to support this superstition.
Crystals grow by attracting the atoms of similar compounds, which join together in an orderly pattern. Impure atoms can invade the atomic structure of the crystal and create mixed crystals of dazzling hues.
In the fifteenth century, amethyst was believed to cure drunkenness.
Some scientists theorize that birds have a tiny magnetic crystal in their brain, enabling them to navigate during migration by detecting the earth's magnetic field.
Crystal gardens became popular during the Depression and are still known to some as a depression flower or coal garden.
The word crystal is derived from the Greek word kyros, meaning icy cold. Rock crystal, a colorless quartz, was believed to be ice that had frozen so cold it would never melt.
In 1921, Henry Ford, eager to find a use for the growing piles of wood scraps from the production of his Model Ts, learned of a process for turning the wood scraps into charcoal briquets, and one of his relatives, E. G. Kingsford, helped select the site for Fords charcoal plant. In 1951, Ford Charcoal was renamed Kingsford Charcoal.
In May 1959, the United States sent two young female monkeys, Able and Baker, into space in a Jupiter rocket. Monkey Able, dressed in a space suit, wore gauze and charcoal diapers.
More than 77 percent of all households in the United States own a barbecue grill. Nearly half of those grill owners barbecue year round and, on the average, use their grills five times a month.
Mrs. Stewart's bluing, a very fine blue iron powder suspended in water, optically whitens white fabric. It does not remove stains or clean the fabric, but merely adds a microscopic blue particle to white fabric that makes it appear whiter. The brightest whites have a slight blue hue which, unfortunately, washes out over time. Adding a little diluted bluing to the rinse cycle gives white fabrics this blue hue again, making them look snow-white.
Because blue-white is the most intense white, most artists when portraying a snow scene will use blue color to intensify the whiteness.
Some pet owners use Mrs. Stewart's Bluing to whiten white pet fur.
Freshly cut carnations placed in a vase with a high content of Mrs. Stewart's Bluing in the water will by osmosis carry the blue color into the tips of the petals quickly.

Charcoal on the Moon
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, spoke the first words on the moon: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." The second thought he expressed was: "The surface is fine and powdery. It adheres in fine layers, like powdered charcoal, to the soles and sides of my foot."

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