Australia's Science Forum

I'm trying to clean up some beakers after the students made crystal gardens using waterglass and cobalt chloride, magnesium nitrate and manganese sulfate. I managed to scrape out the bulf of it, but I've now had the beakers soaking (in just water) for a few days and I still can't shift the residue.

Any suggestions on how I could remove this?

Thanks, all.

Try a bit of acid.

Hammer, darling. Try a hammer.

Smiley, I thought of throwing them at the wall - similar concept I suppose

The waterglass does stain, etch or whatever the glass beakers. Sorry but haven't found the answer for getting it off yet. My 3L was permanently etched a few years ago. Still use it though.

I do the waterglass expt in old jars, eg medium sized Vegemite, or those tallish baby food jars. Then cleaning is not an issue!

What a timely topic! I am attempting to clean up the prep room and had just got to thinking about the crystal gardens (when I decided I needed a bit of a rest , so I logged on here). Anyway like Smiley I have the gardens in old jars, so I can throw them out. What I was wondering is, can the sodium silicate be recycled if I decant it from the jar? or should I throw the whole lot out?

Hi, here I do them in the taller plastic specimen jars, when finished I use a tea strainer and put the sodium silicate in a "recycled" bottle for use next time It does discolour a little but perfectly fine for a few uses and the plastic specimen jars clean up fine as well!MariaC