How fast can crystals
grow ? Donīt they need millions of years ?
For many people itīs almost unbelievable that you can
grow nice sized crystals within a few days or even just
hours.
Now would you believe that one can grow over one inch
sized crystals within a few seconds ?
Crystals growing so fast that you literaly can see how
they grow ?
Impossible ?
Not for the modern crystal
alchemist. Watch how it is done !
the "mysterious"
liquid
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 rapidly grown
crystals
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 crystals almost
filling
the vial completely
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I have prepared
some live videoclips of crystals growing with
"light speed" it might look like but
its no time lapse but actual speed. To reduce
download time the videoclips have been encoded in
MPEG-4, please excuse the "lousy"
quality. Videoclip 1
shows a crystallisation in 3 steps.
Videoclip 2 a realy rapidly
growing crystal.
Videoclip 3 over a complete
minute of crystallisation.
To run the videoclips just
click on VIDEOCLIP on your right
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VIDEOCLIP 1
136 KB, 47 s
VIDEOCLIP
2
40 KB, 15 s
VIDEOCLIP
3
121 KB, 63 s
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To give you
an idea of the dimensions the vial has a diameter of 38
mm ( 1 1/2 inches ) and is filled about 80 mm high ( app.
3 inches ) with the liquid.
Okay whatīs the
trick ?
The trick is using a so called
supercooled melt of sodium thiosulfate pentahydrate. This
salt melts about 48.5 °C (119.3 °F) and forms a
colorless waterlike liquid. When you take care that all
solid material has melted and keep your container tightly
closed when cooling down, so that no dust can get in, and
if you do not shake the container arround, you will be
lucky and you still have a liquid when your molten
thiosulfate has cooled down to room temperature.
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