Creation from Erosion: The Rock Candy Process

So to create Rock Candy it's a really simple process. However, it takes a long time. For my final showing of Sugar Sugar I wanted to have an example. I found out the hard way that Rock Candy actually takes weeks to settle, instead of thinking it would only take a couple of days.

I had originally thought that if I had made an attempt at the rock candy that it would be ready for the presentation, but apparently it takes a lot longer than a week.

  The materials needed to make rock candy are...

2 cups of sugar
1 cup of water
optional: food colouring
String
a paper clip/weight for the string
pencil

Basically you boil the water, toss the sugar in and mix until dissolved. Then you poor the mixture into a jar. Secure the paper clip to the end of the string, measure the jar length and cut the string and attach the paper clip then tie the string to a pencil and place the string in the sugar mixture for a few seconds. Then after saturating, remove the string and coat it lightly in granulated sugar and replace into the sugar/water mixture.

 I used red and blue food colouring in the sugar/water mixture to create a purple rock candy.

After a week it still looks similar to this, however small crystals have began to grow off of the string. Hopefully when I return from holidays the crystals will be better developed.