Liquid moving up a containers walls

[eptheta]

In an attempt to create Rochelle salt crystals using cream of Tartar(or what I thought was cream of tartar) and sodium carbonate, I created some strange orange liquid which smelt mildly of ammonia.

I decided to leave it in a dish anyway and see if any crystals came out of it. Crystals emerged but in a very strange manner.
Look at this picture.
[PLAIN]http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/6291/smass.jpg
(huge image here: http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/5459/image0679.jpg )

The solution was in no way super saturated and so crystals should not have formed. However, every day or so I found liquid surrounding the base of the dish. Also(from the picture you can see) clumps of orange/brown masses(same colour as the original solution) accumulated on the edges of the container.

The brownish colouration on the floor is just the solution that has come from within the container, somehow.

The liquid was in no way filled to the brim, and in fact was only half way up when i filled it.
The crystal structures do not match Rochelle's salt, so I don't really know what I created.

Does anyone have any idea what this phenomenon is called ? And what it's cause is ? And if possible(with my incredibly vague descriptions), what it is i created ?

Thank you.

 

[Borek]

Partial attempt at an answer - if the solution was covered with crystals, it could create some small pressure squeezing the liquid, if the weak point was at the glass/crystals surface, that would be the place where liquid leaks, hence goo appears on the edge.

 

[eptheta]

So is this specific to this crystal I created or should this happen to any liquid.
This never happened when i was experimenting with sugar crystals.

if the solution was covered with crystals

Well, the crystals actually started forming beneath the solution, like a weaved lattice...(not enough for it to overflow or anything), and started forming only after 2 days when i kept the solution out.

I still don't even understand why the crystals were formed ... When i tried growing one of these mystery crystals by hanging it on a thread in the solution, it just dissolved, indicating that the solution was not saturated enough.
Then suddenly all the water decides to run away and form a puddle around the dish... This is strange.

What's even more strange is that none of the orange stuff stayed behind in the dish. Only nice transparent crystals remained. All of the orange solution went and collected on the edges or out of the dish.

I'm going to try this later with a beaker with higher walls and see if it climbs all the way up too...

Any more ideas about what's going on ? Is there a specific name for such a type of phenomena ?

 

[Borek]

Other possibility: if the liquid wets the glass it will always climb a little. Boundary is the place where evaporation is faster, so crystals form there much faster. Once crystals are there, they can wick up the solution, and whole process repeats itself. This must be some particular combination of parameters - evaporation rate and interactions between liquid, crystal and the glass surface.

 

[lightarrow]

Does anyone have any idea what this phenomenon is called ? And what it's cause is ? And if possible(with my incredibly vague descriptions), what it is i created ?

At least sodium carbonate has the behaviour of growing a lot in volume, since it crystallizes with up to 10 water molecules and so you could have the false impression that the solution was not concentrated enough to crystallize, while instead it can be supersaturated (in the 10xH₂O form).
For the rest, if you don't explain what exactly were the reagents and the procedure, it's diffcult to say anything.