 My name is Colton Hitchcock and I'm a 2020 intern for the San Francisco Public Library. Today, I'll be teaching you how to make rock candy. Let's get started. So, we're making rock salt candy and I've got all my ingredients for that right here. Now, first I take a jar and you clean it out with hot water to make sure it's thoroughly sanitized. You don't want dirty candy, do you? And then, there are two ways that you can make the candy itself or have the base layer for it. Way number one is string. You get a piece of string and you cut it so that it's one inch from the bottom. This is not where I'm gonna cut it, but just to show you. And then, you tie the string to something. What I used is a chopstick. You balance it on the top and just imagine that the string is tied to this. Have it one inch from the bottom and then take a paper clip so that it is way down in the jar and so that it's taut. And the other way that you can do this is with taking a wooden skewer or a chopstick like I used and sticking it in the jar so that it's one inch from the bottom again and taking paper clips and clipping it to the top like so. I know that this isn't the most stable thing. Yeah, something like that. And for both of these, after you've figured out your clipping contraption, you're gonna take your string or your chopstick as I have and you're gonna run them under water, make them wet and then roll them in sugar and let them sit for the duration of while you're preparing the sugary syrup. To prepare the sugary syrup, you get, of course, sugar. Six cups of it to be exact. Now, I didn't have enough sugar so I cut the recipe in half and used three cups and that means I had to use less half of the water. In the original recipe, it calls for two cups, but since I cut it in half, I only used one. So that's just a little fun fact. Here I am adding the vanilla extract and the food coloring to the sugary syrup. You don't have to add these though. That is completely optional. Alright, be careful with this step because this syrup might still be very hot. If you're at home, you can use a funnel or something of that sort to pour this syrup in more carefully. But I do not have a funnel, so I'm being extremely careful with how I'm pouring this. Now for the next step, we take our skewer or in or our string and we put them in the sugary water. This plastic clip is one too light to be able to go into the thick syrup and also two might melt because the syrup is so hot. So I'm going to take this off and just put this string in alone. So as an alternative to this plastic clip, I used this paper clip and first, before I put it on, I washed it off in warm water like we did with the jars to sanitize it. And then I clipped it on to the end like the paper clip or the plastic clip. And as you see, it's sinking in. Now, I don't think I made the syrup tall enough, but there's still a big strand of thread with sugar on it that is in the syrup. And now I'm going to get a paper towel or just a regular towel and put it over these jars and then leave it in a safe undisturbed space with no harsh lighting so that way the crystals can form. Put a paper towel over the tops of these jars. Right, now that I've put these jars in a safe undisturbed place we're going to wait about four to six hours to see if the crystals form on the skewer and the string. I'll come back to you then. I've come back to this. I thought it would all just crystallize in the middle, but instead it has become solid like a block. So I'm not completely sure how to get it out, but I'm going to try cutting around the edges of this rock candy jar. It didn't work as well. I was able to get it out after pulling for a little while, but as you can see, the crystals formed all over the paper clip, which is not quite ideal. So if you're going to do this at home, I suggest not using anything metal. Also, when I tried to pull it out, my glass broke right there. So I'd suggest also putting this in a plastic container so that way you can just crush the sides a bit and then pull your candy out. Now with this one, on the other hand, this worked much better because the stick is much sturdier than the string. I was able to pull it out and then got this lovely little rock crystal skewer. The reason that we wet the skewer or chopstick in my case and the string and roll them in sugar is so that the sugar crystals can have something to cling to in the jar. So over a long period of time, say if this skewer was in here, it'll be soaking in the sugary syrup and the base layer on the skewer will attract more sugar molecules to cling onto this and crystallize forming the rock candy. That's all for this video. Be sure to check out the rest of the STEM Challenge Yourself videos by SFPL librarians and Yale interns. Stay safe and have a good day.