Year 2 Students Win Crystal Growing Competition

Term 3 was an exciting one for our Year 2 students as they had the opportunity to enter the Royal Australian Chemical Institute’s Art and Science of Crystal Growing competition. Having learnt about solutions and mixtures in Term 2, it was the perfect opportunity to extend their thinking by becoming ‘crystallographers’!

Eagerly, the Year 2 students took on the challenge and, with the help of the Year 6 students, carefully followed the method to dissolve the powdered aluminium potassium sulphate dodecahydrate in boiling water before decanting it into jars. Students explored how chemists write the names of chemicals using letters and numbers and felt very clever when they could write it themselves as well as being able to pronounce all of the elements in the compound!

The Year 2 students prepare their solutions for growing crystals with the assistance of the Year 6 students.

Over the following weeks, students recorded their observations, exploring how much water had evaporated and how much bigger the crystal had grown. They demonstrated amazing thinking as they connected their observations to their current unit of work – the water cycle – observing that the liquid in the solution evaporated leaving behind the solid which was in the form of the growing crystal.

Some of the crystals created by the Year 2 students.

Each and every time students came into the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) room, they could not believe their eyes as some jars miraculously grew many crystals and others did not! It was a perplexing observation, as students explained that they had performed the experiment fairly so each jar should grow.

As the term grew to a close, the students then had the very important task of taking final measurements and photographs, before expressing themselves creatively by taking artistic photos of the crystals. Students used torches, other gems and crystals, playdough and robots to take their finals images. The crystals were transformed into amazing creations – a bug with a hat on a leaf, earrings and even crystals at the end of a rainbow. The final measurement and photos were sent in for judging.

The Year 2 students transformed the crystals into some amazing creations, including earrings.

Impatiently, the Year 2 students waited for the results over the holidays and upon their return, excitedly found out that their entry had won the 2019 competition for Years Prep to 2 and the crystals that they had grown were being entered into the National competition.

The students transformed one of the crystals into a bug on a leaf.

It was a fantastic learning experience for all and we look forward to hearing the results of the next stage.

Miss Alyssa Flint, Junior School STEM Teacher