Again, another small practical that teaches us the most common method used to purify soluble liquids. And this time, the result wasn't even as satisfying.
At Step 3 and 4, Ruth and I did not fully dissolve all the copper(II) sulfate when we stopped.
Also, at Step 7, where we had to stop heating when about half the solvent had evaporated, we did not do an absolutely good job. When we switched off the bunsen burner, there was still a lot of the solvent remaining, yet to be evaporated.
In the end, we managed to come up with a couple of medium-sized crystals, and the remaining were very small and powdery.
After doing research on the Internet, I found some interesting fun facts about crystals, even though they have nothing to do with the process of crystallisation.
The oldest known crystals on earth are zircon crystals on the Jack Hills of Western Australia, which are around 4.4 billion years old, and in Chihuahua Desert, the largest natural crystal:translucent beams of gypsum as long as 36 feet and softer than human nails. The cave that it is in is known as the Cueva de los Cristales (Cave of Crystals) and have a warm temperature of 58ºC due to a magma chamber about 2.5km away that flows through the mountain, as it is on a set of fault lines (hehe Geography).
Finally, many experts believe that the center of earth is a 2414km wide iron crystal, although it may not be a single solid crystal, but a compound of smaller crystals.
Links:
http://www.myinterestingfacts.com/crystal-facts/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3269047/Worlds-largest-crystal-discovered-in-Mexican-cave.html
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