Growing Unusual Alums

Comments · 451

• ST

  @Steve-s4b · 1 year ago

  My issue with alums is that they all look like they taste incredible.

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• CH

  @christineg8151 · 1 year ago

  Organic chemist here, and I have to say, I&apos;m kind of jealous! You get LOTS of pretty colors. It feels like 90% (or more) of organic chemistry is yellow or white, unless you&apos;re specifically <b>trying</b> to make colors. Also, recrystallization is magic. Maddening, sometimes, but magic!

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• TA

  @talkingcowthatwasthereallalong · 1 year ago (edited)

  We had a re-crystallization practice back in &apos;high school&apos;, each group had to submit a methodology for growing crystals and then perform it in the lab, for some reason my teacher let me, this 16 year old kid with mad scientist inclinations, make chrome alum.<br>The paper (more of an obscure blog post) had no mention of controlling temperature, I even took advantage of the heat generated from the steps (dissolving sulfuric acid in the potassium dichromate solution, reduction with ethanol and neutralization with potassium hydroxide) to keep everything nice and dissolved, there wasn&apos;t any mention of filtering. The crystal was an absolute unit, I didn&apos;t get to see but the teacher informed that they had to break the beaker to get the slab out. It had apparently a vertical hexagonal prism structure but that&apos;s a product of the crystal reaching the top of the solution (thinking of the octahedral structure as a squashed trigonal antiprism, the top and bottom faces look like hexagons)<br>The colors almost match up, I had a green solution that grew a DEEP purple crystal and light through it looked wine red, though my crystals when exposed to either air formed a white seemingly amorphous solid coating over long periods of time. I only got to keep the small crystals, the teacher yoinked the big slab to &quot;motivate the future students for this practice&quot;, he just abused his position of power to take my shiny rock from me.<br><br>Upon closer inspection, at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5AMfC2kDV8&amp;t=1902">31:42</a> I can see some white in the crystal facing the camera, which means 16 year old me succeeded

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• CA

  @CamStLouis · 1 year ago

  My college certainly considers me an unusual Alum….

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• CH

  @chasecarlson4900 · 1 year ago (edited)

  Iron does color amethyst so the purple makes sense!

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• DO

  @dottedboxguy · 1 year ago

  i love that this is the purest form of modern alchemy. mixing a bunch of stuff together that goes through various wildly different colors and textures to end up with beautiful little rocks

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• EM

  @Emerybirb · 1 year ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5AMfC2kDV8&amp;t=421">7:01</a> actually, I’ve found the quickest way to speed it up is to increase the video playback speed

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• BA

  @babyvsnuke · 1 year ago

  Inorganic chemistry is so interesting, I don&apos;t know why this channel doesn&apos;t get more views.

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• MM

  @mmmhorsesteaks · 1 year ago

  As a lifelong strictly non-inorganic chemist I found this quite enjoyable.<br>And isn&apos;t it weird how they&apos;re all either colorless or purple-adjacent? Someone should look into that.

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• BR

  @BrokenSoul79x · 1 year ago

  Having been in highschool before the internet, I really feel that my teachers truly failed at their attempts at making learning <i>interesting.</i> &nbsp;😢

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• JI

  @jimsvideos7201 · 1 year ago

  Thank you for risking cancer for our amusement.

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• NI

  @ninabean12 · 1 year ago

  Forbidden rock candy!

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