My partner and I recently melted down bismuth using a hot plate. Once melted down, it has characteristics of meted tin, almost like silver water. It moves easily in a metal measuring cup, and hardens after some cool down time. Our goal was to dump out excess liquid bismuth around half way into the cool down time, right when the crystallization is at it's peek. Looking Back: What happened?
Our first few times attempting to make bismuth crystals were all busts. The crystals were not creating on their own and therefore just branching off of the sides. To make a crystal grow in the center of the container, we dropped a very small crystal of bismuth to trigger the crystallization process. this worked very well. The bottom picture shown is one of our many successful crystals of bismuth. Looking Beyond: What do you think has happened? What’s the science? Bismuth is fairly easy to understand. It submits to heat with little resistance, as it's a fairly brittle substance when thin. When it cools from a liquid state, it goes through a crystallization stage, and our goal was to dump out the rest of the bismuth once it was around halfway hardened. The science behind crystallization boggles my mind to this day, considering how intricate and precise things can be, naturally. The science behind our mini crystal triggering a bigger crystal stage is fairly simple. The temperature of the mini crystal is much colder compared to that of the surface bismuth, and when it cools is when the crystallization happens, that is why it triggers a crystallization process right at that point. Looking inward: I believe we got our desired results our final time around. We got beautiful crystals, brittle they might be. I am quite pleased with this experiment especially considering how un-orthidox the process is. I think we might have gotten bigger,better crystals if we used a metal pot to cook up a big chunk of bismuth. Looking outward: Collaboration and Impact I think my partner (Bijan S.) and I worked well together, especially because of our communication; and that is a very key quality to have in a partnership when working with dangerous materials and equipment as we were. Looking Forward: What next? If I could do this again I would use a metal pot to cook up more bismuth at one time, so that way our crystals will be bigger and theoretically more beautiful. Take aways: Bismuth makes cool jewelry
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AuthorGabriel M. Archives
December 2015
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