[Rockhounds] Fun with Sodium Carbonate...

[pmodreski at aol.com]

Hi Brett,

Some chemicals/minerals readily form large crystals, and some just don't--they are prone to just crystallize as fine-grained powders when their solutions are dried or evaporated.? Sodium carbonate, I think, as well as sodium bicarbonate, are two of the latter--I believe they are just hard to produce as large (or even, readily visible) crystals.? So yes, I suspect one readily gets massive stalactites from sodium carbonate, but not much in the way of crystals.

P.S., as you probably know, sodium bicarbonate occurs naturally, though rarely, as the mineral nahcolite.? A more common mineral is trona, which is a mixed sodium carbonate-bicarbonate hydrate.? Sodium carbonate decahydrate is the mineral, natron, but it is also not very common.

Pete






-----Original Message-----
From: Brett Allen Johnson <bj9709 at yahoo.com>
To: rockhounds at lists.drizzle.com
Sent: Mon, 30 Jun 2008 1:02 pm
Subject: [Rockhounds] Fun with Sodium Carbonate...



I am trying to build a nice collection of all the Carbonates. I have started my 
collection with both the massive form (calcite travertine, smithsonite nodules, 
rhodochrosite stalactite, etc) and large individual crystals (rhodochrosite 
cubes, calcite points, siderite blades, etc).
Recently, I found NaCo3 at the hardware store (pool PH thingy). It comes in a 
powdery form and it easily dissolved in water.
One of the crystal growing website says, "...to make a stalactite." by using a 
solution of water / NaCO3 and wool string. That is fine and dandy for a massive 
form of the crystallized NaCO3, but I would like to large crystals of NaCO3, 
too.
Any Suggestion???




      

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