Sugar Crystal Experiment

If you are doing a salt or sugar science project you might want to check out the forum discussion about a sugar crystal experiment. Here is sunfish123's original post:

My son is conducting an experiment studying the effect of evaporation on the growth of sugar crystals. One condition has the lid closed on the jar, the second condition has just an open jar, and the third condition has an open jar with a fan blowing on it. In our first attempt we clearly did not add enough sugar to the water, but there clearly was evaporation as the jar with the fan blowing on it had decreased water level. Now we have saturated the water but a crusty layer has formed on top of the water of the two open jars, preventing any evaporation. We have a piece of rock candy tied to the end of the string, and there are no crystals forming on the candy or the string. I feel like we followed the directions very carefully. The experiment has been running for 2 days. Do we need to break up the crusty layer each day? I'm not sure what we have done wrong, as all our research indicates that this is a pretty easy experiment and crystals should be forming rather quickly. Thank you.

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