Ning spent the majority of his time inside his house. The only time he left was two times a day to go to the cafeteria to get some food.
He didn't need to eat. He simply needed to show his face so that the people who were secretly keeping a watch on him knew that he hadn't left the city just yet.
If not for them, he could have spent all day and night inside his room, just experimenting.
Ning's first few experiments were on the crystals, trying to figure out if there was a way to get rid of them without using Conversion.
What if the other powers of Spark could remove it as well?
He tried water and fire to test out how the crystal stood up against a Soaker and Burner pouring their respective element into a person's stomach.