Pretty Pictures (2)

These lovely blue mushrooms pop up around this time of year. Turns out, they also bruise a lovely green color!

Incidentally, does anyone have protips on preserving mushrooms? I tried putting this one in a closed container with some CaCl2 but it just got slimy and grungy...

Alexleyenda, quite the colorful reaction indeed! Is the practice of indirectly siphoning product from a sigma aldrich jar common?

Quote: Originally posted by The Volatile Chemist

Alexleyenda, quite the colorful reaction indeed! Is the practice of indirectly siphoning product from a sigma aldrich jar common?

Bought a lill bit of titanium (6Al 4V alloy)

1) nice size chunk
2) 7 lb 13 oz each by a kitchen scale
3) nerdy size reference

Ya, the purpose... I wanted to use it for unrelated projects and planning on using some scrap for labware. Not sure exactly what. But I havent often seen a Ti sample that big, only having wire and thin plate besides it. Thought it might be a decent share.

[Edited on 23-7-2016 by violet sin]

Quote: Originally posted by The Volatile Chemist

Alexleyenda, quite the colorful reaction indeed! Is the practice of indirectly siphoning product from a sigma aldrich jar common?

Okay....so....


1) Melt Ammoniumthiocyanate....check
2) Add Ammoniumdichromate....check
3) Extract Product with hot water....check
4) Put it in the freezer....check

5) Take it out of the freezer......oh....damn it.

So there is this point where water "precipitatates" as well -.-

I have absolutely no clue if it's supposed to look like that since it didnt work for a friend who tested it as well but for me I got this orangle nearly glowing bright compound which is hopefully a Caffeine-complex....will need to make that again but it looks really amazing.

The second picture was something interesting I found. So there is this line on I think Wikipedia where it says that Dimanganese Heptoxide was stable in CCl₄. So we made some in this solvent. The question was how to destroy it so we took it and dropped it into a container full of water. Its hard to see on the picture but this smaller vial is open and filled with Permanganate in CCl₄ and around this vial is water. SInce the two dont seem to mix and the solvent is quite oily it stays inside without coloring any of the water. It lasted for a day like this then I moved the vial and it mixed.

Quote: Originally posted by mayko

These lovely blue mushrooms pop up around this time of year. Turns out, they also bruise a lovely green color! Incidentally, does anyone have protips on preserving mushrooms? I tried putting this one in a closed container with some CaCl2 but it just got slimy and grungy...

Quote: Originally posted by NedsHead

Quote: Originally posted by mayko   These lovely blue mushrooms pop up around this time of year. Turns out, they also bruise a lovely green color! Incidentally, does anyone have protips on preserving mushrooms? I tried putting this one in a closed container with some CaCl2 but it just got slimy and grungy... it looks like it could be Lactarius indigo, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactarius_indigo Are you preserving to keep a specimen or to eat? sun dried or put in a food dehydrator will suffice if you're intending to eat them at a later date, I have no idea how you would preserve one as a specimen.

My attempt at photographing potassium oxalate/chloride and green potassium ferrioxalate crystals:

@Brain&Force
This´s not pretty picture, this is beatiful picture .
Could you tell me approximately how big (or rather small ) they are?
thanks.

Quote: Originally posted by Velzee

My attempt at photographing potassium oxalate/chloride and green potassium ferrioxalate crystals:

Nice crystals velzee.
Maybe you could try to take a photo with more contrasting background.
by the way, could you enlighten me what were you trying to make or why did u crystallised these mixture of compounds?
thanks in advance .

Quote: Originally posted by crystal grower

Quote: Originally posted by Velzee   My attempt at photographing potassium oxalate/chloride and green potassium ferrioxalate crystals: Nice crystals velzee. Maybe you could try to take a photo with more contrasting background. by the way, could you enlighten me what were you trying to make or why did u crystallised these mixture of compounds? thanks in advance .

Quote: Originally posted by crystal grower

Quote: Originally posted by Velzee   My attempt at photographing potassium oxalate/chloride and green potassium ferrioxalate crystals: Nice crystals velzee. Maybe you could try to take a photo with more contrasting background. by the way, could you enlighten me what were you trying to make or why did u crystallised these mixture of compounds? thanks in advance .

Quote: Originally posted by DraconicAcid

I got the same kind of result when I tried to make the malonate analogue. To get all the iron in solution, I had to use excess malonic acid, and then I couldn't get rid of the excess.

I have pictures if I can figure out how to post them.

[Edited on 26-8-2016 by DraconicAcid]

[Edited on 26-8-2016 by DraconicAcid]



[Edited on 26-8-2016 by DraconicAcid]

Quote: Originally posted by DraconicAcid

...

What are those? I need them

Quote: Originally posted by Neme

What are those? I need them

Quote: Originally posted by Velzee

He's back! Welcome back! Yes, as DraconicAcid said, I made an attempt at potassium ferrioxalate, but I forgot to account for the stoichometry when I replace KOH with K2CO3, thus excess contaminates remained.

Lol thanks Velzee .
Actually I still check sm from time to time. Summer holidays are just too busy .

Hopefully some Vanadium(II)

This was an experiment for storing sodium short term without an oxide layer and to get pictures for ebay ads.

30 grams of Sodium was made molten inside a bath of mineral oil, I believe paraffin oil, and then injected into room temperature, 70°F (~21°C), oil using an all glass 10mL syringe.

I have been trying several different techniques to get uniform sizing and the middle section, where it looks the best, is what I described above. The bottom 1/4 of the vial I used cold oil 50°F (10°C). The top 1/4 of the jar was hot oil, 100°F (~38°C).

**SAFETY NOTES**
I learned the hard way that molten sodium will fall out of the syringe as soon as it points just 1° below 180° luckily it bounced off my finger and didn't do more damage. In the gallery you'll see the Pea size blister on the tip of my pinky finger.

Clean sodium catches fire much easier, especially when shiny and molten.

-------------------

Beaded Sodium Gallery ~ 8 more pics

-------------------





Beaded Sodium Gallery ~ 8 more pics

[Edited on 2-9-2016 by Arg0nAddict]

Here's some more sodium, which is best?

Third one IMO, but they are all pretty pictures .

I made this one as a birthday gift for a friend; it is a two week old potassium ferricyanide crystal.

Quote: Originally posted by Metacelsus

How did you make it? Slow evaporation with a seed crystal, or something like that?

So we took a thermal image of a cup of coffee and saw these darker spots which always move in thise kind of net shapes on the surface.
I changed the colors so it becomes easier to see and added some temperatures so you can see the difference. For some reason these spots are around 3-4°C cooler than the rest of the coffee.

I think it might be the oils which are hydrophobic and collect on the surface but as oils dont evaporate that easily the stay longer on the surface and can therefore cool off a bit which makes these spots colder. At first I thought it was only a minor temperature difference but when I looked into the data I saw that there is a surprising temperature difference. Any idea ? I waited till the surface was perfectly still and most of the boiling and fuming was over before I took the image.

Quote: Originally posted by fluorescence

So we took a thermal image of a cup of coffee and saw these darker spots which always move in thise kind of net shapes on the surface. I changed the colors so it becomes easier to see and added some temperatures so you can see the difference. For some reason these spots are around 3-4°C cooler than the rest of the coffee. I think it might be the oils which are hydrophobic and collect on the surface but as oils dont evaporate that easily the stay longer on the surface and can therefore cool off a bit which makes these spots colder. At first I thought it was only a minor temperature difference but when I looked into the data I saw that there is a surprising temperature difference. Any idea ? I waited till the surface was perfectly still and most of the boiling and fuming was over before I took the image.

Quote: Originally posted by mayko

These lovely blue mushrooms pop up around this time of year. Turns out, they also bruise a lovely green color! Incidentally, does anyone have protips on preserving mushrooms? I tried putting this one in a closed container with some CaCl2 but it just got slimy and grungy...

Quote: Originally posted by arkoma

Quote: Originally posted by mayko   These lovely blue mushrooms pop up around this time of year. Turns out, they also bruise a lovely green color! Incidentally, does anyone have protips on preserving mushrooms? I tried putting this one in a closed container with some CaCl2 but it just got slimy and grungy... It's a breakdown product of the psilocybin.

???

Wikipedia says the blue pigment is an azulene derivative:



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactarius_indigo#Chemical_comp...

Quote: Originally posted by arkoma

protips on preserving mushrooms? I tried putting this one in a closed container with some CaCl2 but it just got slimy and grungy...

My new crystal specimens:

Xylitol


Saccharin (sodium salt)

Saccharin is not sold anywhere nearby me, so I managed to extract it from the cyclamate-based sweetener (usually containing 90% of Na cyclamate and 10% of saccharin). Compound for this photo was extracted from 210g of sweetener, that gave me 18g of saccharin (not a bad yield I think). As a byproduct, I now have 180g of recrystallized sodium cyclamate, and no idea what to do with it.

Potassium zinc sulfate K2Zn(SO4)2*6H2O

Quote: Originally posted by crystal grower

Are all of these crystals products of slow evaporation? And if yes, how long did it take to grow them?

Hmmm, I've never grown xylitol crystals. I ought to try it .

Here are some pretty neat Sulfur needles that formed as a solution of hot toluene cooled. I was under the impression that the Ag grade "dusting sulfur" was ~90% sulfur and 10% anti-caking like CaCO3 (IDK if that is true). The thing is all the sulfur fully dissolved in the toluene in a hot water bath. Would the CaCO3 dissolve in toluene? (I think not) - could there be something else? I always saw pure sulfur crystals as a beautiful clearish yellow, shinny.



The strange thing about CuSO4 is depending upon the temps at which the crystals form, their attributes vary greatly. There are 2 more penta-hydrate crystal types that I didn't show, they are cubic like and dark blue and the other is in between table salt size and canning salt and a little lighter blue than the dark blue in the below image.


I believe this was the result of trying a re-crystalization with pure water. A saturated solution was boiled down until most water was gone (like 90%). The boiling liquid was poured into a SS pan and almost all the liquid crystallized into this powderish form. This form seems very nice to work with if it needs to be dissolved quickly in water.


This is the strangest crystal form I found and I havent' been able to replicate it. It is heptahydrate and some call it "ice" or "snow" crystals - these don't melt. I think these happened from a medium saturated solution at ~ 90F then placed in a freezer until it reached almost 0F. I did similar before and got cubic dark blue crystals when the solution was fully saturated.


This is the result of placing a 60% saturated (saturated with CuSO4 compared to water and probably 25% H2SO4 by volume) solution in a slow-cooker/crock pot and allowing to evaporate slowly. Solution was dark blue when starting. This shows that it has dehydrated below the pentahydrate form to possibly tri-hydrate??


This is similar to the above but but a higher wattage slow cooker was used, thus allowing to get to the brown stage which I believe is a mono hydrate.



FeSO4 - Steel plate was added to hot H2SO4 and some H2O2 and the result was these green crystals and some rust (brown/red). I was really amazed how much formed from such little amount of solution.


Just some CuSO4 that originally was just king of moist but has turned into clear and hardish crystals on the bottom.

Some chili powder in an ethanol Soxhlet extraction. Found that pentane did a better job.



[Edited on 29-9-2016 by Chemetix]

Quote: Originally posted by DraconicAcid

The really light blue crystals may be the trihydrate. The green stuff you have is definitely not the trihydrate (which is blue), but may be a hydrogen sulphate. The bottom pictures aren't CuSO4- did you mean CaSO4? Nice crystals, though.

Quote: Originally posted by Chemetix

Some chili powder in an ethanol Soxhlet extraction. Found that pentane did a better job.

Quote: Originally posted by Chemetix

Some chili powder in an ethanol Soxhlet extraction. Found that pentane did a better job. [Edited on 29-9-2016 by Chemetix]

Id like to add some pics to the other CuSO4 images I posted just above. I had been bubbling air (2CFM) through ~20% H2SO4 with about 25-30lbs Cu wire. I ended up[ with an unusual green blue instead of the various shades of blue (darker, more sulfate was present). I then removed the liquid and evaporated in "slow cookers" crock pots and it resulted in the olive green images above (and first image below) and the concentrated liquid had turned almost black.




This is the remaining acid after the green crystals had been removed



Here is the same acid but a hotter cooker was used and there looks to be anyhdrous (white) CuSO4 at the bottom and just above the layer there looks like copper crystals/powder for about an inche above the brown layer above the white layer.



As the bubbling didn't seem to work ANYWHERE near as well as 35% H2O2 (I had bubbled 96+ hours so like close to 400lbs of pure O2), I decided to add 1/3 cup of 35% H2O2 and 2/3 cup of ~85-95% H2SO4 with copper wire and flattened pipe. The black acid turned green then blue and fizzed. I ended up with this below, it was like a paste.



I poured the remaining water into another coffee pot and then scraped the CuSO4 off the copper (about 90% removed). I then added 2/3C H2O2 (added to the blue liquid from the last batch) and another 1.33 cup of the acid along with the remaining wire. After about 10 mins of slow to moderate fizzing (temp was probably 120-150F) fizzing stopped and liquid was dark blue. I then removed any reaming copper so it didn't get stuck in the crystals. It slowly cooled to room temp and this is what the results are:

The next 2 pics are same container, just different angles




I would have to say that I got higher yields using about 1C 35% H2O2 than running a 2CFM bubbler (with a ~40 sq inch diffuser - SUPER FINE bubbling - traveling 2ft up through the acid mix then reaching the last 1ft of solid mix of copper wire (tons of surface area and packed semi-tightly. The CuSO4 should have sank to the bottom.) I calculated that 4 days should have given about 400lbs of pure O2 (plus nitrogen, CO2 but that is additional weight) - The O2 is just not working like the H2O2 - no where close.

I'm trying to figure out how to increase the oxidation or make the H2O2 myself.

Quote: Originally posted by Chemetix

Hotplates and mantles are verboten in Aus.

I've accidentally made some ferrate(VI) solution while oxidizing FeCO3 by bleach, so decided to make a "family photo" of differently colored iron compounds.

Compounds, in reading order:

• Sodium ferrate(IV)
  
• Iron(III) oxide hydroxide
  
• Ferric alum (covered with a layer of aluminum analog)
  
• Sodium tris-oxalato ferrate(III)
  
• Mohr's salt
  

Quote: Originally posted by Dmishin

I've accidentally made some ferrate(VI) solution while oxidizing FeCO3 by bleach, so decided to make a "family photo" of differently colored iron compounds.

Set the equilibrium between Chloride and Aqua ligand for Co(II) so it changes to blue at boiling conditions. I first used KCl but as it wouldn't work (even precipitated) I changed it to HCl and just took the clear solution above. So this solution was KCl saturated in summer having 25°C and now it is slowly getting colder in my lab to about 10°C which caused the KCl to slowly crystallize.

At first I was a bit surprised by the shape but then I found pictures of so called crystal clusters which look similar. Still a strange shape to me.

KCl Crystals

Nice KCl crystals
I have not tried to grow KCl crystals yet, NaCl was my first crystallization for many years and now I am hooked.
I have just dissolved KCl and NaCl in stoichiometric ratio

(18g NaCl, 22g KCl in 100g H2O, I went with these numbers as I figured if 36g NaCl and dissolves in 100mL @20øC and KCl 34.2g, I would take half of NaCl and 23.1g 0.3 mol KCl to make up the solute) This sound right?

RogueRose posed the question if anyone had tried NaCl and KCl crystallization and so I thought why not.
Now to wait for seeds and the growth
Will post the photos.

Interesting, Makes me wonder what the hopper face KCl and NaCl cubic combination will look like .
I crystallized Sodium Nitrate, it makes quite water clear crystals butt also hopper faced. I will have to do a set of KNO3 and NaNO3 now too lol
The hopper face crystal in the middle of the CuSO4 chunk is NaNO3.
It is just there for decoration cause I have not taken the time to set up displays of some sort.

@RogueRose

Hi Rose,
Speaking of Sulfur, those are awesome sulfur crystals, I only got miniature crystals from 90 C Toluene on cooling and evaporation.

I have tried twice with Carbon disulphide as the solvent. This resulted in crystals both times but not what I was trying for.

Close, but solvent evaporated in the fume hood over the weekend both times and did not allow time for seed collection and suspension.

I tried on Wednesday to suspend a seed, it melted. On Friday there was nothing but an inch of darker yellow solvent and on Monday I came in to 1/4" solvent and pic below.

It gave me a surprise tho, who knew that a sulfur crystal could be crystal clear yellow with glass smooth sides and sounds like glass when you bump it. Rhombic crystal coming soon
[img][/img]

The four faces of vanadium. I've very pleased that I was able to get V(II) by reducing the solution with aluminum wire, and didn't have to muck around with zinc amalgam.

Quote: Originally posted by Dwarvensilver

Nicely Done Sir! those look Awsome

Quote: Originally posted by zts16

I'm really surprised that you got V(II) to work just using aluminum. You didn't even have to activate it with mercury or gallium? I tried using Al/Ga once for reducing V(III) to V(II) and that didn't even work.

A bit of HCl will activate your Al just nicely. Al does not like chloride ions.

I'll be interested to see pics of the crystals you manage.

Quote: Originally posted by zts16

I'm really surprised that you got V(II) to work just using aluminum. You didn't even have to activate it with mercury or gallium? I tried using Al/Ga once for reducing V(III) to V(II) and that didn't even work.

Erythritol, slow evaporation method. (the rest is here)




[Edited on 27-10-2016 by Dmishin]

Quote: Originally posted by j_sum1

Very cool. I am impressed. I am more likely to play with xylitol though since I can easily get it. Does it also exhibit birefringence?

Thanks! I don't see any sign of birefringence in my xylitol samples.

By the way, here is sodium trioxalatoferrate(III). It is much more soluble than K salt. Unfortunately, crystals are not stable.

[Edited on 29-10-2016 by Dmishin]



[Edited on 29-10-2016 by Dmishin]

Dmishin,
I am amazed at all the beautiful crystals you grow.
I have been trying to find a chemical that will grow clear beauties like those Erythritol, so I will try that out, thanks for the great examples for inspiration.
I have a bag of pure saccharin, I wonder how it crystallizes. .
Here are a few of my early (lol this spring) crystals

Copper II sulfate
Potassium ferricyanide
Copper sulfate, nickel sulfate Combination
Ferrous chloride

Keep up the great work

Cheers,

Dwarven

Quote: Originally posted by Dmishin

Quote: Originally posted by j_sum1   Very cool. I am impressed. I am more likely to play with xylitol though since I can easily get it. Does it also exhibit birefringence? Thanks! I don't see any sign of birefringence in my xylitol samples. By the way, here is sodium trioxalatoferrate(III). It is much more soluble than K salt. Unfortunately, crystals are not stable. [Edited on 29-10-2016 by Dmishin] [Edited on 29-10-2016 by Dmishin]

Quote: Originally posted by stibium

Phosphorescent alkaline earth sulfides activated with bismuth. From left to right: BaS / SrS / CaS

I was browsing through the archives of Pretty Pictures mega thread and I just want to say WOW.

Aluminum with silver sand (i.e. rather pure SiO2) heated in an electric arc to the boiling point of aluminum (2500 C) and then allowed to cool.

Actual size: about 24x36mm.

The balls in the center are probably crystallized elemental silicon




[Edited on 2016-11-7 by metalresearcher]

Definitely not the best quality picture by FAR, but one you might not have ever seen before. Diiodoacetylene just after formation.

Some large crystals of nootkatone, a naturally occurring sesquiterpene, that I grew at work as one of my own side projects! Its aroma is sharp and assertive, reminiscent of fresh grapefruit peel. And since there wasn't a picture of it online before, I stuck it up on Wikipedia for good measure!



[Edited on 12-1-2016 by Amos]

Quote: Originally posted by Amos

Some large crystals of nootkatone, a naturally occurring sesquiterpene, that I grew at work as one of my own side projects! Its aroma is sharp and assertive, reminiscent of fresh grapefruit peel. And since there wasn't a picture of it online before, I stuck it up on Wikipedia for good measure! [Edited on 12-1-2016 by Amos]

Very nice crystals. Where did you get the compound?

Quote: Originally posted by Hegi

Quote: Originally posted by Amos   Some large crystals of nootkatone, a naturally occurring sesquiterpene, that I grew at work as one of my own side projects! Its aroma is sharp and assertive, reminiscent of fresh grapefruit peel. And since there wasn't a picture of it online before, I stuck it up on Wikipedia for good measure! [Edited on 12-1-2016 by Amos] Very nice crystals. Where did you get the compound?

One of the company's biggest projects is biosynthesizing it in three steps using genetically modified yeast. They also chemically synthesize it for research purposes, and my crystals were grown from the latter, of which we had about 2 kilos of 97% pure material in the lab freezer

Spotted a tiny scorpion today :



It is about 8mm long and turns out to be a Book Scorpion (<i>Chelifer cancroides</i>, a type of pseudoscorpion (it has no stinging tail).

Very nice Amos, I like the clarity. Have you tried to isolate one of those seeds and grow a single unit?
It amazes me as to the number of compounds that will grow amazing crystals.

Here are my latest , a couple of easy syntheses and alum, my largest alum at 80.5g

Nickel ammonium sulphate, Cobalt ammonium sulphate, and Potassium aluminum sulphate.






[Edited on 2016-12-3 by Dwarvensilver]

Nice Aga,

Have to say cool and interesting but not real pretty
I like it!

[Edited on 2016-12-3 by Dwarvensilver]

Quote: Originally posted by Dwarvensilver

cool and interesting but not real pretty

Whoever saw my video on trying to make Ti(III) from Ti metal will know how little Ti(III) I actually had in the end.

So I had to do a McMurry reaction at the University and in the end hydrolyzed the rests of my reactants to yield this beautiful purple solution.