As A Kid,

and indeed at school,

we often grew crystals in a saturated water solution, but this always seemed to take forever, you can speed things up by applying an electrical charge, think of chromium plating for instance, well Italian photography student Emanuele Fornasier did just that, he spent the last few months filming the formation of crystals,

 the result is Crystal Birth, a timelapse of some 18 examples of electrocrystallization, where an electric current is run through a chemical solution, causing metal deposits to form over a period of several hours or days, You can see more of his timelapse work here on his website.