 Hi everybody, my name is Sheridan. I work at the Long Beach Public Library and I'm here today to talk to you about gems and crystals and how they form underground, along with show you how to make some rock candy from stuff that you already probably have at home. If you haven't signed up for summer reading just yet, be sure to sign up. Go to longbeach.beanstack.org and create an account and then that way you can start earning prizes for reading all summer long. If you've already signed up, be sure to enter the code pirate into the activities tab of your challenge to be able to get points for watching this video, okay? So here we go. First and foremost, crystals and gems are formed from solutions underground and what a solution is, is a liquid filled with little bits of a solid and so the solid gets solved within that liquid and then later on as the liquid dries up or hardens, those little bits of solid end up forming together into crystals. So I'll tell you what I mean. So for crystallization to happen, it needs five ingredients. The first one is minerals, those little bits of solid. The second one is temperature. Most gems and crystals form at really, really, really high temperatures. The third one is pressure. Oftentimes underground, there's tons and tons and tons of dirt and rock above those solutions that are pressing down and forcing those minerals together to form gems and crystals. The fourth thing that they need is time. It takes a super long time for crystals and gems to form underground and you'll also see that it takes a little bit of time for our sugar crystals to form as well. And the fifth thing that they need is space. When a magma and the crust interact, it forms little cracks and the magma flows in there and that space is where the crystals and the gems are gonna form. So crystals and gemstones are formed from a solution of minerals suspended in molten rock. As molten rock cools, crystals begin to form. So for example, here we have this thermometer, right? At the very, very tight corundum will form with a pretty high temperature. In between that or next to that, we've got topaz. Topaz forms at sort of like middle temperatures and then forming at the very lower temperatures, we have the crystals quartz. So you can see that different crystals form at different temperatures depending on their own chemical properties. Gems crystallize underground at super high pressure and very high temperatures. Where the crust meets magma, the motion and pressure creates these little cavities and fractures in the crust. And what ends up happening is that the magma flows into those cavities and fractures and then as it cools begins to form crystals and gems. Sometimes crystals are interrupted while they're forming. And what ends up happening there is that we have these interesting different patterns. So I don't know if you can see on this, but you'll see that the very top of this crystal is kind of greenish. The middle is a little bit more on the yellow side and then the very bottom is pink. That's called color zoning. And what happens there is that this top crystal started to form, the earth moved a little bit or more magma flowed in with a different mineral and it attached to that first one. But because it was a different mineral, it has a different color. Another thing that can happen is inclusions. Now inclusions are when a crystal begins to form but then the crust moves or more magma flows in and then a whole another crystal forms around that original crystal. So if you can see on this one, there's a dark spot in the middle there. That's an inclusion of one mineral within another mineral. That's another thing that can happen. And sometimes crystals don't form underground at all. For example, during a volcanic eruption, when all the magma flows up and becomes lava, there's these little gas bubbles that are formed. And depending on the mineral content of the lava or the magma, things like hercimer diamonds can form. And hercimer diamonds are really well known for their clarity, but also for the fact that because they form in a gas bubble, they don't have to attach to any surrounding rock. So they end up with these really cool, sort of like double ends. So those are hercimer diamonds, just some of the different things that can happen while crystals are formed. All right, and if you wanna learn more, check out books through LBPL to go or read some articles on our databases online at LBPL.org, okay? Next up, I'm gonna show you how to make some sugar crystals and we'll go from there, okay? Okay, everybody, so now I'm gonna show you how to make your very own sugar crystals with things that you already have at home, okay? You're gonna need some of these bamboo skewers. You can also use popsicle sticks or even just like some dowels that you might have. You can even use string as well. Just make sure that it's clean because if you wanna eat them later, you don't want a dirty string, right? You're gonna need a few of these, a plate, some like a measuring cup that you can throw in the microwave that'll hold up to heat and make sure that it has a handle because the stuff that's gonna get inside is gonna be really hot. You're gonna need a cup of water and three cups of sugar, some containers to grow your crystals, some coffee filters to keep dust and bugs out of the solution as it dries and if you wanna get fancy, you can even do some food coloring to be able to give your crystals a nice color, okay? Oh, and you'll also need some clothespins to hold the sticks. So the first thing that we're gonna do is we are going to dip our sticks or string if you're using string in some water to wet them a little bit. And what this is gonna do is it's gonna produce a surface onto which the sugar solution can actually attach. They call them kind of like seed crystals. So now that they're wet, we're gonna take a little bit of this sugar and kind of spread it out on the plate. Just like that, you don't need too, too much. And taking that bamboo skewer that you earlier wet, you're gonna kind of roll it around in the sugar so that you end up with some sugar on the end of the stick if you can see that. And what that's gonna do is it's as the solution swirls around it, when we pour it later, those little sugar molecules are gonna stick to those crystals and then form bigger and bigger crystals as time goes on. So you're gonna do this for all the sticks that you have. You don't need too, too much. And then what you're gonna do is you're gonna set these bad boys aside because they need to dry completely before you actually pour the sugar solution on top of them. So we'll set those aside so that they can dry. And now we're gonna start working on our solution. So I'm gonna take my big measuring cup and I'm gonna pour in the one cup of water that I had. And for this solution, you're looking for a one to three ratio, which means that since we have one cup of water, we're gonna need three cups of sugar. I know it's a lot. So first thing I'm gonna do is pour or measure out one cup of sugar and I'm gonna mix this in with the water at room temperature. I use one of these sticks here just to mix it up. And you wanna mix this so that it becomes dissolved and the solution becomes clear. All right, so I've mixed that up and you can see that there's still plenty of sugar in there. But what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna throw it in the microwave for a couple of minutes to start heating up the water. When the water gets hotter, it becomes able to dissolve more and more volumes of sugar. And then what we're looking for is a super saturated solution, which means that the water cannot dissolve any more sugar in it, okay? So we're gonna throw this in the microwave for two minutes. It's probably best to get some help from an adult with this just because the solution inside the microwave is gonna start getting really, really hot and we wouldn't want you to burn yourself. So help, get some grown up, get some grown up help. You might need one of these bad boys. And yeah, two minutes. Okay, so it's been two minutes. I'm gonna pull this out and be really, really careful because it's pretty hot. But you can see that the sugar has begun to dissolve a little bit, right? So now the solution is more clear. I'm gonna keep stirring this just to help it dissolve a little bit more. There's still some crystals at the bottom that you can see. And when stirring this, you wanna stir nice and gently so that you don't splash any water or solution up at the top because you could burn yourself. All right, so it looks like that's pretty well dissolved. But remember, we needed a one to three ratio. We've only put in one cup of sugar, so we still need two more. So I'm gonna measure out another one cup of sugar. I'm using CNH. It's America's favorite sugar. And it now has an easy pour spout. So, pretty cool. Mix in here. We're gonna keep mixing. You can mix with a spoon or with a spatula. I'm just using this little bamboo stick for now. And you can see that now that the water is hot, it's actually dissolving a lot faster. Heat tends to dissolve crystals and other solvents. And then I think even at this point, we can put in our third cup of sugar. Measure out another cup here. It's gonna feel kind of sticky at this point because there's a lot of sugar in ratio to the water. But we're gonna stir it up a little more and we're gonna toss this in the microwave for another two minutes, okay? Be careful as you're putting it in or have your grown-up help. So it's been another couple minutes. At this point, be sure to have your grown-up pull the solution out of the microwave because it's really, really hot right now, okay? I'm gonna do it very, very carefully. So you can see that the solution is now a little bit more of a yellowish color. There's some bubbles at the top because it boiled in the microwave and that's what you're looking for. If when you're making your solution, you pull it out and you notice that it didn't boil. Throw it in for another couple minutes and it should boil then, okay? So we're gonna stir this up to make sure that the rest of the sugar is dissolved in the solution. And like I said before, stir gently so that you don't splash any out and accidentally burn yourself or make a mess on the counter. And then you wanna check to see because you can see here that there's undissolved sugar crystals. So I might throw this in for another minute or so in the microwave, okay? It takes a lot of make this. All right, so it's been another minute. Our solution has definitely boiled. You can see a bunch of bubbles in the solution now, which means that it's boiled. That's what we're looking for. And we're gonna give it another quick stir just to make sure that there is no lingering undissolved sugar crystals in here. All right, perfect. So I think we're good to go. Now with this, we're gonna let it cool for a good 30 minutes, okay? So I'm gonna put it over here. And thankfully for us all, I had prepared some earlier that's already been cooling for a while. So now what we're gonna do is we're actually gonna assemble our crystals. I've got here three little jars. You can use a tall glass, really whatever you've got, but make sure that it's heat resistant so that the hot solution doesn't crack the glass and then it ends up spilling all over the place. I had also prepared a couple of those little sticks with sugar crystals earlier. These are our seed crystals. So we're actually gonna use these in these three jars to set up our rock candy, okay? What I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna put a couple of drops of food coloring in the bottom of the jars so that that way when we stir in the solution, it'll pick up the color of that food coloring and we'll have some rock candy of different colors. I'm gonna use this teal, maybe some pink. You only need one or two drops. If you really, really want bright colors, you can even do three, but I wouldn't do more than that, okay? Next up, you're gonna carefully pour the solution since it'll still be pretty hot. Get your grown-up to do this into the jars. I'm gonna start off with a cup in each of the jars and then anything that I have left over, I'll just fill up the jars as we go, okay? So we've got here another cup and you can see the food coloring start to dissolve within the solution as well and produce some pretty cool colors. Got the third cup there, pretty cool. And now since I have some left over, I'll just kinda pour it into the rest of the jars as well so there isn't any left. Pretty cool. I'm gonna take that same stick that I was using to stir earlier and I'm just gonna stir this around a little bit to evenly distribute the color within each of the solutions, okay? There might be some color mixing happening. You can always rinse off the spoon or the stick in between colors just to avoid that, but now you can see that the different colors are really evenly distributed in the solution and I think we're done with that part. Next up, what we're gonna do is we are going to poke a hole in the coffee filters. Now, the coffee filters we're gonna use to cover the tops of the jars so that dust and bugs and other stuff can't get into your rock candy, okay? So I'm gonna use one of these sticks here and I'm just gonna poke a hole right in the middle, just like that. It doesn't have to be perfect. We're really just trying to get a hole to be in there so that we can get our sticks through the top of the hole, okay? And now we're gonna need those sticks that we prepared earlier and at this point should be completely dry. We're gonna put them through the top of the coffee filter and then we're gonna put a clothes hanger on top just like that. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna sort of eyeball it so that the very bottom of this stick doesn't touch the bottom of the jar and then that'll leave room for the crystals to grow around it, okay? So you just wanna be kind of... And so I think that should seem a lot of right. And then put that there. And as you can see, the very bottom of that stick is not touching the bottom of the jar. And what that's gonna do is that's gonna allow all the crystals to grow around the stick. And then you wanna put this aside for a good five to seven days. It takes a while, I know. So I'm gonna prep these other two jars and I'll put these aside for a minute. Do this, I have another stick, another clothes pin. I'm just writing another stick, top of the coffee filter, another clothes pin and right on top. And so now that we've got these three set up, you're gonna put them aside somewhere where they are not gonna get a lot of traffic or a lot of noise and just kind of let them sit for a week or so. You can come and look at them every day to see if there's more crystals forming all around and then at the very end of the week, you're gonna pull these out and you'll have some rock candy. I'm gonna shoot another segment of this video in a few days and then that way you'll see the finished products of these three jars, okay? So I'll see you guys then, bye. Hey guys, so we're back. It's been about eight days since we put in our rock candy, our gems and crystals into the jars. So I'm gonna show you real quick how to pull them out and then what to do after that, okay? So as you can see, I've got this one here, which we poured last time, I believe. And then I had made one at home as well, so I've got this one here as well. These are some pretty big jars and then I've got the little ones that I made as well. So after a little while, and you notice that the crystals have grown, you just take off the clothespin and the coffee filter and then you'll see that once you pull out of the solution is gonna be your rock candy. Now this still has a lot of the syrup on it, so what you wanna do is put it aside so it actually starts to dry. Here, what I've got on the table is parchment paper. I just put out a lot of it so that it doesn't get all over the table. But if you've got aluminum foil or saran wrap, even some wax paper, that'll work. You just wanna put it down so that the table doesn't get super sticky. I'm gonna pull this out, let it drain for a tiny bit and then I'm just gonna lay it down on that parchment paper. I'm gonna put this aside. As you can see that there's a lot of crystallization at the bottom here, but most of the syrup is still in the jar. I'll put it aside for now and I'll cover it with our coffee filter so that no bugs and stuff can get inside. I'm gonna pull out the second one now. Same process, just take off the clothespin. Take off the coffee filter, it might have gotten stuck a little bit. And then pull out your rock candy crystal. And so what's been happening for seven or eight days, really however long you leave it, is that the minerals in the solution, which are the water, have been floating around and attaching themselves to the seed crystals, which were the sugar, on our bamboo stick. Remember that crystals need time, so that was about seven or eight days. They need space, which was the space around the rock candy. They need temperature. When we poured this, it was still pretty hot, right? But as it went cooling down, things started to crystallize. They need pressure. And here there isn't a ton of pressure, but underground, there's tons and tons of pressure from the rock and the soil. And so they formed this crystal. So these are some pretty big rock candies, right? These I left in there for a little bit longer. And then I did these a couple of days ago to show you what they look like when they're all dry. What I did with these is after I pulled them out of the candy jars, I actually put them back into a jar that I had pulled the candy solution out of with more clothespins and another coffee filter to let them drip dry, okay? So I'm gonna pull these out by pulling off the clothespins, pulling off the coffee filter. And as you can see, these are dry and ready to enjoy. You can stir a drink with these to sweeten it up. You can eat them just like this, but don't be careful of your teeth. Or you can just kinda look at them too. Look how pretty they are. Pretty cool, huh? So these are done. As you can see, I didn't put in a ton, a ton of watercolor in here, so they're a little bit paler. And then these, once they dry for a few hours, will also be ready to go. What I might do with these is drain this jar into another jar and then hang them in there. If you really, really wanted to, you could actually reuse this solution as well by taking another bamboo stick, rolling it in some sugar, waiting for it to dry, and then doing the process all over again to get a second stick of rock candy. I wouldn't do that too many more times though, because it starts to get kinda funky, okay? And so as you can see, we've got our rock candy pretty much ready to go. If you decide to do this at home, feel free to share it with us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, and have a sweet summer, everybody. See you later.