Pretty Pictures (2)

So I tried making "Berlin Green" after I found a good explanation in an old book last week...well the result is not so green to me....

Quote: Originally posted by mayko

Chemical & Engineering News has a tumblr, and it is about as hoppin' as you'd expect: http://cen.chempics.org/

fantastic link, thanks ... just spent a couple of hours there

Quote: Originally posted by fluorescence

So I tried making "Berlin Green" after I found a good explanation in an old book last week...well the result is not so green to me....

Some big boys



It's simply sodium sulfate that I got as a byproduct of making basic copper carbonate.

Quote: Originally posted by Amos

Some big boys It's simply sodium sulfate that I got as a byproduct of making basic copper carbonate.

Quote: Originally posted by Amos

Some big boys It's simply sodium sulfate that I got as a byproduct of making basic copper carbonate.

I was about to toss this in the garbage can when these crystalline vines caught my eye. This was some leftover saturated sodium silicate that sat on the shelf for around a year.

Needle-shaped calcium benzoate crystals, produced by reaction between saturated CaCl₂ solution and saturated C₆H₅COONa solution. After one night these crystals fell out of solution due to low solubility.

Wow! You can make some expensive salts with all that. I bought 10g of Eu(NO₃₃*6H₂O for $150 several years ago. Checking again today, it's up to $170. Sigma sells it for $350!

Quote: Originally posted by fluorescence

@Marbus: Probably because Europium is an Alkali Earth Metal. Eu and Ho especially are very much at the position of Strontium with all their properties and if you look at a picture of oxidized dentritic Strontium in comparison to Barium (which is darker) you see how similar Sr and Eu look. I'd have to take a closer look on the crystal structure but it's probably due to the way it was cleaned, distillation or chemical transport or something similar and then it grew in this shape.

Quote: Originally posted by Tsjerk

Electron wise it is an earth alkali metal.

Forgot to bring in the acetic acid but really needed some today. So I scratched it out of the bottle to yield these nice transparent plates.
Looks really nice.

An hour and a half of crystallizing later and there are some long, beautiful crystals of salicylic acid, the camera doesn't do it justice. They are each 3-7 cm long.

I could see the 'hollowness' using a magnifying glass but I could not get a decent photo' with my 'phone, hence not shown before.
this is the best photo' that I got ... growing in a beaker

Some NaCl crystals I grew last year. I placed 2 L of supersaturated NaCl solution in a wide plastic tray and left it to evaporate over the summer. When the volume decreased to half, I noticed the crystals grew much slower, so I decided it wasn't worth the effort and simply took them out of the solution. The next batch gave smaller crystals, I guess the bigger the solution volume, the bigger the crystals. Oh and the NaCl I used was from water softening tablets.

Some of my favorite pictures. I know they're not all strictly chemistry, but I thought people here could still appreciate them:

hydrothermally grown carbon nanofoam SEM:



DC magnetron I built:



Immunoflourescently labeled ad DAPi stained mouse 3t3 cells, 1 undergoing mitosis:



Venus fly trap, trap, stained with tuluidine blue. Digestive enzyme excretion glands can be clearly seen:



Decellularized pig heart and decellularized strawberry:



And finally, hydrothermally grown copper crystals:

Iodine crystals. And a bit of tiny ember glass shards.




[Edited on 6-1-2017 by TheMrbunGee]

Wow, MrbunGee, those iodine crystals are really neat! I've never seen any that look quite like that. How did you go about making them?

Also, I have my own pretty crystal picture to share now. I found these in the container of waste acetone that I used to rinse off my glassware after making Martius yellow (2,4-dinitronaphthol). I wouldn't have expected Martius yellow to grow such nice crystals, but it did!


I'd like to try growing a larger one now that I know it works.

Quote: Originally posted by zts16

Wow, MrbunGee, those iodine crystals are really neat! I've never seen any that look quite like that. How did you go about making them?

A so called Metalcarbonylhydride or Hieber-Base, in this case K[HCr(CO)₅]. Had to prepare this at the university this week. It's quite unstable but has a lovely color.

Cemented copper from e-waste sol, onto a large square nail (~12" long). It nearly ate through at the liquid/atmosphere interface.


Manganese sulfate from battery crud. The reddish was from the first pull, second go was much lighter colored. What a mess to play with. Brought back memories of much earlier experiments with copper.



Alum from a heat-sink/H₂SO₄. I had none laying around, but did have the makings for it. The stuff was heated untill a light crust formed, then cooled. It had a really cool gell texture with an opalescent marbled look. Neat


Zinc sulfate crystal in petri dish.







[Edited on 14-1-2017 by violet sin]

A crystal of sucrose, a crystal of nickel-doped ammonium magnesium sulphate dodecahydrate, and crystals of bis(ethylenediamine)copper(II) nitrate.

Quote: Originally posted by Neme

How does one get so clear transparent crystal? Mine are always dim.

Some copper compounds.

https://imgur.com/a/nPxHC


Details here: https://www.sciencemadness.org/whisper/viewthread.php?tid=71...


[Edited on 14-1-2017 by CaCl2]

[Edited on 14-1-2017 by CaCl2]

Love the rainbow display, cool stuff ^^^
1) Flea market score. 1$/ea
2) View of a family members front deck



They were doing cedar essence oil from chips and needles.

[Edited on 15-1-2017 by violet sin]

On the left, Martius yellow as the ammonium salt in aqueous solution, and on the right as the free acid upon addition of a few drops of conc. HCl.


Not sure why they're showing up sideways.

Oh yeah, and aga, I realized that if I set my phone camera to "square," the pictures are just small enough to post here, so I will likely double post more of my pictures between my blog and here.

https://texium.wordpress.com/2017/01/17/update-on-martius-ye...

Tin(ii) oxalate that I just made.

I find the needle-like crystal structure quite beautiful.

Quote: Originally posted by gluon47

Tin(ii) oxalate that I just made. I find the needle-like crystal structure quite beautiful.

Looks like snow or coconut dust

What intend you to do with that SnC2O4?
What will it be used for?

Yeah, It really does look like coconut dust now you say it, not so much in real life though.

I plan to convert it to tin(ii) oxide by heating with ammonia solution, then try isolating elemental tin via thermite.

[Edited on 24-1-2017 by gluon47]

Efflorescence of magnesium sulfate

A c150 mm tall x 50mm dia porous pot that was in a saturated epsom salt solution, drained, and left for over a year in a plastic tub.

Copper(II) formate crystals. Their supernatant is the deepest of royal blues and yet the crystals are an icy-looking aqua color.

I loved the green color of chlorophyll dissolved in ether, also this is a picture of the biggest copper sulfate crystal i have grown to date, the picture's a bit bad but I have a video showing off the crystal on twitter, and the last photo is my recrystallized paracetamol crystals ^.^

Accidental 'hot ice'! Cool looking crystals after boiling down sodium acetate solution. Brown/yellow(ish) color is from organic impurities, thanks to the vinegar I used making it.



Woah, the top turned white while I was writing this.




And after breaking up

[Edited on 2/6/2017 by Geocachmaster]

That white crystals on second pic may be leftover sodium carbonate if stoachiometric amounts weren't used.
The same thing sa as interfering my first try on hot ice as it wouldn't let the solution to supersaturate.
Nice pics by the way .

[Edited on 6-2-2017 by crystal grower]

Quote: Originally posted by Geocachmaster

I don't think it was sodium carbonate because I used an excess of vinegar; I'd rather suffer through boiling acetic acid into the room than have contamination. I'll check later for any carbonate contamination though.

Quote: Originally posted by Amos

Copper(II) formate crystals. Their supernatant is the deepest of royal blues and yet the crystals are an icy-looking aqua color.

Quote: Originally posted by Bezaleel

Quote: Originally posted by Amos   Copper(II) formate crystals. Their supernatant is the deepest of royal blues and yet the crystals are an icy-looking aqua color. Hi Amos, how did you prepare it? Just dissolved (basic) copper carbonate in formic acid?

Reduction of KMnO4

Yep, massive reduction .

1 L Flask with lots of prussian blue on the bottom.



95% of the stuff I do is based on transition metals and I'd say 40-50% is cyanide based. So automatically blue Cyano-Iron phases like prussian blue should form when the wastes are combined.

But there is another reason why this is so much. I use this flask for the wastes I produce in the lab. It is in an old aquarium in case it leaks or breaks and contains a month's or two months' amount of waste to settle. Added is always some Ferri(o)cyanide, DMG, Hydroxides etc to bind most of the wastes. It settles down and only the clear solution is decanted off into secondary containers. So in case one of the waste bottles breaks there isn't much heavy metal in there. So jus working with Iron salts will produce a lot of prussian blue in the end but it looks quite nice. Used to be a blue solution and now after a few months it is all settled.

Here's some nice crystals of phthalic anhydride I got from a recrystallization.

Quote: Originally posted by Amos

Copper(II) formate crystals. Their supernatant is the deepest of royal blues and yet the crystals are an icy-looking aqua color.

Large crystals have a nice form and beautiful color.
It`s a pity that they erodes even in warm air.

There crystals were synthesed from copper(II) hydroxide and formic acid.

Hopefully some RuO₄ (video will come soon on YT).
Distilled some RuCl₃ with H₂SO₄ and KMnO₄.

I got a spectrometer and decided to compare the emission spectrum of mercury with that of a fluorescent lightbulb. Looked like a pretty good match to me!

Guess how i made this RB flask scrap?






[Edited on 18-3-2017 by Waffles SS]

Not fully reacted yet but a mixture of

[Ru^VIO₂Cl₄]^2- and [Ru^IVOCl₁₀]^4-

Diborane

Recrystallized ammonium chloride:


The hair-like towers continued to grow with time, looking a lot like sodium silicate crystal gardens:




Ice crystals in the parking lot after winter storm Helena:

Reaction of what I believe is KSeCN (not sure so something between K₂Se, KHSe and KSeCN reacting with a drop of conc. HCl. You can see how it takes around 0.1 seconds for the redox reaction to happen, quite interesting how slow this is. The bottom pictures were how it looked after a few additional drops.

Selfmade OsO₄ solution (left), took me a while to find a chemical that reacts with solid Os metal and then reduced Potassium Osmate(VI) in Ethanol (right)

Some Cu(bpy)₂(Cl)₂6.8H₂O recrystallised from acetone and water



[Edited on 19-4-2017 by HeYBrO]

Quote: Originally posted by fluorescence

Wow nice, are they transparent to some extend ? On the photo it looks like you might be able to see through them a bit ?

Made some CuCa(CH3COO)4.6H2O
Really hard to make, 4:1 Ca:Cu ratio does not always work, several failed attempts has been made.
The solution is quite supersaturated.. Need to dilute again the mother liquor to obtain the seed crystals.

Well this is not really a photo but I still love the structure. Had to explain why hydrates PdO can be dehydrated for YouTube and compared it to the dehydration of CaCl₂x6H₂O when I found out that for some reason there is no good picture of the Hexahydrate anywhere on the web which I found really sad. So I took the crystal structure data from the literature and simulated the tricapped trigonal prismatic structure again.

You can see how each Ca has a coordination number of 9. Along the axis many of these stack on their triangular surfaces so you end up with ⁶/₂ + 3 caps per Ca which equals 6 H₂O and thus is called hexahydrate.

As you can see there is no Chloride to be seen. I didn't add them to make it easier to see but they are surrounding this structure with hydrogen bonds towards the water hydrogens. If you want to dehydrate that thermally there is no real contact between Ca and Cl which is why other compounds form as well.

I find this structure really nice because you don't expact something like that for a simple Calcium

CrO3, the largest crystal is ~10mm across.

Tried my hand at synthesizing xanthopurpurin a little while ago and my first sample of purified material crystallized in a strange, but very pretty way.

I had a concentrated sodium sulfate solution sitting in a beaker on the bench for a few days. When I checked the lab today I noticed some very beautiful crystals, this was the best one.

Beautiful color

[Os(Thiourea)₆]^3-

Some potassium chloride crystals slowly grown from water.

Molten silver on a piece of drywall; you can see the reflection of the room


My element collection in no particular order


Bubble of boric acid as I dehydrate it to make boron trioxide


Crystals of boric acid on a beaker


[Edited on 26-5-2017 by Plunkett]

That element collection shot is pretty cool. I like it a lot.

A few flowers I was keeping, with stems split between two water sources, each dyed a different color.


I took a few pictures under the microscope. The first shows the sharp partitioning in the flower petals. The second is interesting because it shows an upwelling of one color in a sea of the other!

Some zinc sulfate I finally arsed myself to recrystallize it from its solution, after sitting in a closet for 2 years.

One picture is bunch of copper(II) acetate crystals.

In next pictures is my attempt to double phantom crystal, chrome alum crystal in chrome alum+ KAl alum mixture in KAl alum. The inner black crystal is not visible tho so it's more like normal phantom crystal.

Here's some crystallized copper acetate from a spill:

(Open in a new tab for the full experience )


And this is thermochromism from flower pigments. The alcoholic extract of lilac petals changes color when heated (and cooled). The first photo is at room temperature, In the second the right test tube has been heated to ~70C, and the third photo is when it has cooled back down to room temp.

I'm pretty sure most of the people here have seen the various oxidation states of manganese, but I'll post it anyway. I particularly like the +2 oxidation state because of the slight gradient from dark to light pink then to clear. The +7 and +6 are way too dark (probably too concentrated of KMnO4 solution), and the +4 simply precipitated .

First is a sealed vial containing reacting bromine and sulfur in n-butanol. The end products will presumably be sulfuric acid and bromobutane.

Second is a pool of galinstan with other metals dissolved in it from prior experiments. They form an oxide crust on its surface.

Third is an attempt to oxidize phenylalanine past the amine stage. It ended up forming a sphere at the center of the test tube.

My first success in making K₂[OsCl₆]. As mentioned before I am not using pure OsO₄ but a very contaminated solution which also has other reactive compounds from the dissolution process of Os metal in it. So I cannot simply copy experiments but have to redesign each of them. No matter what text I used I was not able to make it directly but had to go to [OsO₂(OH)₄]^2- first which is insoluble in Ethanol and can be cleaned that way and then turn this into the chloro complex. Still, I am pretty satisfied with the results, an insoluble red powder. The problem is I probably added too much or heated it too long as it decomposed a few seconds afterward.