I grew up all over, in Saudi Arabia, Peru, and the U.S. but I remember several years over we had this kiddie-craft type mini Christmas tree. It was about four inches tall, two pieces of cardboard that sat on top of each other to prop itself upright, and you sat it in a little water and poured powder on top of it, and it would grow these neat multicolored crystal-thingies. Anyone I’ve ever mentioned this to is like, WTF? I can’t remember what they’re called, but I can’t be the only kid that had 'em! :smack:
I bought one of these for my son at science museum, and it was indeed very cool – but extremely fragile. After all the crystals were grown, he accidentally bumped the tree, and the crystals disintigrated – poof! He was crushed.
My advice is grow’em where you want to display’em. They don’t tolerate a lot of moving around.
Here is a link to a PDF that tells you how to do it yourself without a kit. I remember growing a crystal garden on a lump of coal as a kid (and having a devil of a time even w-a-a-a-a-a-y back then finding laundry bluing!)
Don’t want to piss on your candle here, but don’t you think that in the left-hand picture, the crystals make Santa look like he’s grown a gigantic excited bulge in his pants?
Something different, but a few years ago I remember there were these model things you could buy… they were called Magic Gardens or something like that. It was this stiff paper model of a mountain and trees that you set in a tray and filled it with this liquid stuff that came with it. The liquid soaked into the paper and in a few hours, these paper blossoms would sprout out of the mountains and trees. It was really pretty, although I have no idea how it worked. Sorry or the hijack, but your post reminded me of them.
I had something like this as a kid, back in the early- or mid-70s. I remember it had multicolored crystals very similar to those in the links provided here, but you’d put them in a water glass or something and watch them grow.
I’m a little unclear on the details, but I thought it was pretty neat at the time.
I remember both the Magic Tree and the Magic Garden. And I was born in 1984.
They can’t be THAT old…I used to love those things. We did them a lot in school growing up, and I loved them a lot so my parents would either buy them or make them for us.
The old Gilbert’s Chemistry sets had instructions and materials to “build” the same sort of thing, but instead of a cardboard template, you used string anchored in the water with a washer or nut to hold the lower end down.
In fact, the blueing has instructions on the bottle. (I guess because not enough people know what to do with blueing anymore and Mrs. Stewart is getting hard up.)