An Illustrated Epic.

As promised.

In the beginning, there was dilute acidified H₂O₂ ...and a piece of copper. Peroxide from pharmacy, acid and copper from hardware store.

One hour and more scraps later...(everybody knows the redox reaction that's going on, so I won't bother to write it down). The nascent hydrogen makes the solution look extremely turbid.

After sitting atop the furnace for a few days. They are pretty, but tiny (unless you go by protein-crystallization standards). Note the larger one at the upper edge - it was the first one to exist! Also, after a few days the presence of impurities (fine green-blue powder) became apparent.

Dissolve, filter, crystallize. Still too small. Dissolve, filter. Crystallize. (Several weeks passed this way.) Then, after cleaning things up a bit:

Success! Not a perfect crystal by any stretch of imagination, but I am satisfied. Dimensions: roughly (3.3 cm)*(2.3 cm)*(0.5 cm). I didn't use the standard techniques (tying a string about a seed crystal, etc.) and the conditions are not exactly ideal (among other issues, the bottom of the container isn't flat), so it's understandable why the result looks a bit odd.

After adding isopropyl alcohol to the residual solution. I claim that the flaky stuff is copper sulfate (they looked white both to my eyes and on camera, but my hands were blue after handling).

I really like this picture because it shows two useful lab procedures in a very colourful way:

• Separating the water from the alcohol, despite the fact that water and isopropyl alcohol are highly miscible in each other. I was tempted to say "salting out", but there wasn't much water in the alcohol to begin with, so...
• Recrystallization of the CuSO₄ in a two-solvent system...the CuSO₄ was virtually insoluble in the alcohol and precipitated into very nice, fine powder after awhile. I couldn't collect because the wet precipitate all got stuck at the bottom of the container.
  

As for disposal...*apologetically* I did it the high school way. Anyway, I still have the precipitated copper sulfate (re-dissolved and recrystallized into a mess of crystals - I think I see green CuCl₂, too...not pretty, so no picture.)

There are actually alot more pictures, but Blogger doesn't let me upload more. Apologies for their awful quality - my hands get shaky.