I didn’t bring much back from Australia, since I wanted near-empty suitcases for Japan, but I did come home with this:
I ‘won’ this via the points I got spending too much on a DC Comics card-redemption machine in the arcade at Westfield Kotara. I actually got two sets, and gave one to Sue. I wonder if she’s made it?
Considering the quality of the items they usually have in these arcade shops, I had little expectation this would be good or even work at all. But I followed the instructions to the letter to find out.
Start by adding the powder to hot water and stirring until the mixture is clear:
This suspension will form a crystal via evaporation, but a substrate (on which the crystal will grow) is needed, and that’s the little ceramic cone that came with the kit. The instructions were to wait for the mixture to cool, place the cone in it, then let it grow for a week.
The above shows the growth process, with the photos taken about two days apart. As you can see, the crystal grew well and by the last picture some crystals had also formed on the sides of the container. Here’s what the crystal looked like once removed from the mixture and allowed to dry:
It was a little trick to take a good photo since it’s so transparent! It’s also very fragile, and even touching it can cause the crystals to break off. It’s vaguely semi-spherical and about an inch in diameter.
So far so good for the crystal growing part, but does it glow? I shone a torch on it for 10 seconds or so and and turned out the light:
Holy smokes! This thing is positively radioactive. I’ll spare you the details about how this works, but it’s not just glow-in-the-dark, but even acts as a fairly bright green light source:
This little kit far exceeded my expectations. It was simple to make and worked perfectly first go. I’ve paid for worse kits than this one, so this easily gets two thumbs up 🙂