Sweeeeet Crystals

I wanted to test the growth of sugar crystals created by different sugars over one week.My experiment was to see whether the growth of sugar crystals depended on different sugars used. I used white sugar, light brown sugar, coconut sugar, dark brown sugar, and demerara sugar. I mixed 1 cup of boiled water with three cups of sugar to create the five sugar mixtures. I looked at my sugar mixtures every day over one week.

Crystal formation:
Out of all the sugar samples, I saw that the white sugar had crystals on the second day of the experiment, and the crystals kept growing on the white sugar for the rest of the experiment. But no crystallization, visible with the naked eye, appeared on the coconut, demerara, light brown and dark brown sugars. I wanted to see if there were any microscopic crystals so I used my microscope. I saw that there weren’t even small microscopic crystals, at least as observed through my microscope. I saw many particles of dirt but no crystals.

Evaporation:
I had created a time-lapse video of the crystals of the week. I observed that the coconut and dark brown sugar mixtures evaporated more than the other sugar mixtures. I observed that the coconut and dark brown mixtures kept losing liquid but there was nothing happening to create a sugar crystal. Through the whole week the coconut mixture lost one centimeter, and the dark brown mixture lost two centimeters of liquid. In comparison almost no evaporation happened to the white sugar, light brown sugar, or demerara sugar. Additionally, I observed that the light brown sugar and the white sugar mixtures solidified over the week into the granules at the bottom of the jars. Unlike the white sugar granules that became compact and solid, the light brown sugar granules remained loose.

Viscosity:
As I was pouring out the mixtures I noticed that they all had similar viscosity. The light brown sugar had the most watery mixture. When I poured the light brown sugar mixture it came out of the jar like water. The demerara sugar was the thickest mixture. As the demerara sugar came out I saw smaller, dark, and stringy pieces.  White sugar came out with crystal chunks

Colour:
I observed the difference in colour. White sugar mixture was clear. The remaining four mixtures were shades of toffee brown. The white sugar, light brown sugar, dark brown sugar, and demerara sugar came from the same plant, sugar cane, and yet they all look different. The white sugar is a refined cane sugar. The demerara sugar is evaporated cane juice that solidified. The light and dark brown sugars are unrefined sugars that are squeezed cane juice evaporated and crystallized in one day. Coconut sugar is made the same way as dark and light brown sugar except the plant is coconut, from which the nectar of the coconut flower is used.

With that I conclude, that to create a sugar crystal you can’t use any sugar. You have to use a particular one.