How to Do Chemical Tricks — Alum Baskets, Easy Crystallizations

Alum Baskets.

Form a small basket about the size of the hand, of iron wire or split willow; then take some cotton, such as ladies use for running into flounces; untwist it and wind it round every limb of the basket.

Boil eighteen ounces of alum in a quart of water, or quantities in that proportion; stir the mixture while boiling until the alum is completely dissolved.

Pour the solution into a deep pan, or other convenient vessel, and suspend the basket in the liquor, so that no part of the basket shall touch the vessel, or be exposed to the air.

Let the whole remain perfectly at rest for twenty-four hours.

When you then remove the basket the alum will be found very prettily crystallized over all the limbs of the cottoned frame.

Easy Crystallizations.

Saturate water _kept boiling_ with alum; then set the solution in a cool place, suspending in it, by a hair, or fine silk thread, a cinder, a sprig of a plant, or any other trifle.

As the solution cools, a beautiful crystallization of the salt takes place upon the cinders, etc. , which are made to resemble specimens of mineralogical spars.