15 October 2004

A Closer Look: Crystals

Bill Dembowski

There are various ways of producing crystals: Freezing the material, melting it, dissolving it in an appropriate solvent, etc. For this article I chose the simple method of dissolving the material in several drops of distilled water on a microscope slide and letting it evaporate under the gentle heat of a desk lamp.

Sodium Chloride

How could you not start with table salt? The chosen method worked very well with salt. Sugar, on the other hand, just turned to syrup.

Hypo

As an avid black and white photographer, I have an ample supply of this chemical, which is composed of ammonium thiosulphate, boric acid, sodium sulfite, and acetic acid.

Borax

Although I purchase a few over-the-counter photographic chemicals, I prefer to brew my own developers and so have quite a variety of materials to choose from. Borax is certainly the most ordinary.

Hydroquinone

Hydroquinone produced two distinctively different types of crystals. One appeared rather "soft and fern-like."

The other looked "hard and spikey."

Potassium Bromide

Potassium bromide was another substance that produced two types of crystals. Both, however, were small enough to be captured in the same field of view.

Sodium Sulfite

A plumber's nightmare of glasslike pipes.

Sodium Carbonate

This beautiful structure was the result of the crystals forming within the confines of a tiny droplet.

Comments and/or suggestions for future "Closer Looks" are always welcomed by the author, Bill Dembowski, dembowski@zone-vx.com.