My first practical crystallography experiment: tracking the growth of a basal-supported CuSO₄·5H₂O crystal
I'm a geologist experimenting with crystal growth as a way to explore practical crystallography outside the usual thin-section/mineral-identification setting.
I started with CuSO₄·5H₂O and prepared a filtered saturated solution by dissolving the salt in hot water, followed by slow cooling and evaporation at room conditions.
Rather than suspending the seed crystal, I decided to leave it resting on the borosilicate-glass bottom of the beaker. The idea was to observe how a crystal develops when growth occurs from a substrate, somewhat analogous to mineral growth along a cavity/vug or vein wall.
I've been recording the crystal dimensions and morphology at regular intervals.
Initial seed — 23/07: (3rd pic)
1.1 × 0.7 × 0.2 cm
27/07: (2nd pic)
1.5 × 1.0 × 0.3 cm
31/07:
1.6 × 1.0 × 0.4 cm
08/08: (1st pic)
1.8 × 1.1 × 0.5 cm
The interesting part has been the change in morphology during growth. Initially, the crystal mainly expressed prismatic faces, but with continued growth additional inclined faces began developing, particularly as thickness increased.
The crystal remains transparent, and when backlit I can see what appear to be growth zones with tiny internal inclusions. I'm not calling them fluid inclusions yet—I don't have the optical characterization to confirm that—but they're interesting enough to document.
There have also been secondary nucleations on the beaker bottom and occasionally around the main crystal. I'm manually removing the parasitic crystals so that the primary crystal can continue growing under relatively consistent conditions.
I'm keeping a photographic and dimensional growth log throughout the experiment.
The goal isn't simply to grow a large crystal—I'm interested in observing how morphology, nucleation and internal structure evolve during crystal growth.