I fell in love with chemistry because i didn't have a hard time making a mental image of what happens during a chemical reaction. Now when i can visually see the beauty i'm happy i decided for chemistry. You inspire me NurdRage.
I'm meant to be an electrical engineer but when I watch this I realise that there's so much more to learn.....please oh master let me come and learn the darker arts of electroalchemy I promise to be a very astute pupil....!!!
monkeyemperor12 Its possibile with gold cyanide. Cody did a gpld platin video. If things can be gold plated why do you think that gold crystals cant be grown?
Yes. You absolutely can. If you can plate something with it, you can grow crystals with it. Gold would behave almost the exact same way. You could use gold chloride, or gold cyanide solution. Density, chemical resistance, or mercury have nothing to do with this. Gold chloride is a commonly used compound, and its very easy to get your hands on. As long as you have the money, because I believe its somewhere around 240 dollars a gram. As a jeweler and goldsmith, electroplating is one of the things I have to do all the time. We use a solution of rhodium sulfate and sulfuric acid for rhodium plating. A solution of gold chloride for gold plating. Nickle chloride for nickle. and copper nitrate for copper. In our setup, we have a platinized titanium anode, and a gold cathode. The cathode is some gold wire with four hooks soldered to it. I love when we clean the cathodes off, because you can watch the rhodium metal slowly crystallize onto the hook. It takes months, but its cool seeing them develop.
Mexi Chemia The problem with electrolysis is you need to have very pure material. You absolutely could make your gold chloride, but it would be even more expensive. Because the nitric acid you would need is very expensive. I can buy gold chloride plating solution easily, already mixed and ready, much cheaper than straight gold chloride. Or if you needed to, you could easily make cyanide plating solution that works much better. However, for a big corporation, they want safe and cheap. So pre bought acid based solution is the only reality. hahaha
I'm sure that these are the same things God says when he makes things. "Wow, look at that - isn't it amazing!" Thank you for showing how incredible even very small things can be.
@@AstralTraveler cost of materials its probably cheaper to just buy silver than grow it in any significant amount...Also time...time is money...If it was cheaper to make silver than buy it people would be doing just that :)
@@cutlerylover Actually just so happens that I have around 50kg of electric contactors - copper with silver patine and contacts made of pure silver with addition of iridium and paladium... This will be probaqbly my first step in the process of extraction/rafinstion... :) The only issue is the NO2 - do you know if there is some kind of air filter to prevent the deadly pollution of my neighbourhood?
@@AstralTraveler well the silver crystal growth here is through a microscope or at least loupe so id imagine you would need to replicate what was done here 1000+ times? maybe 100,000 times? to maybe get 1ozt silver currently worth $23..is that profitable? thats for you to decide lol
@@cutlerylover I guess that it's possible to adjust the speed of crystal growth by increasing the amperage of electric current. Besides, extracting silver is only the first step. What I'm mostly interested in are the "leftovers" of electrolyse - mostly platinum, iridium and palladium. Compared to them, silver is just a mere byproduct. .. I mightt soon become quite rich (at least compared to my current standard of life) :)
why does he keep saying its microscopic...if you would do this for a few days straight wouldn't it eventually grow to the size of a quarter or so?? I'm not trying to be a smart ass just trying to see if anyone knows.
I've only seen 3 videos from this guy so far. Is there any particular reason he uses a filter for his voice other than to hide his identity for some reason.
He's a real life Doc Brown (see my other comment!). But seriously, it is silly to disguise your voice just by changing the pitch. Anyone with basic audio software can change it back to any other pitch. So if someone were really looking for him, they'd find him. Or her!
Crystal growing really fascinates me, thanks a lot for the video, i am studying chemical civil engineering and one of the reasons i am studying that is your awesome videos, thanks again
dude i take my hat off to you, i look through all these videos, and am am not only learning but you take it to the next level, by explaining the process in a well informed way. cheers from australia :)
Five plus minutes of my life, very well spent! Your video's are some of my most satisfying and enjoyable subscribed to content on RU-vid and I can only have wished that you were the professor that had taught me 'O' chem back when I was still in school. Thank You again.
Even though I do not understand the things you talk about in your videos but I love every single one of them, please make more! :) I will never understand science but ive alway been fascinated by all the amazing thing science has uncovered and created. You are so awesome!
Awesome video, I've seen pictures of this quality in my textbooks but never on video, whenever you do a crystallization from now on you gotta do this, it's so awesome!
This was a fantastic vid. I love every one of these NurdRage videos and this one was top notch. Thank you for taking the time to make these videos and posting them here. Please don't ever stop rockin'!!
I love watching how the difference in current changes how the crystals grow. I would like to see this same experiment performed, but instead of a static resistor, placing a variable resistor or potentiometer into the chain, and then throttling the resistance to impede or accelerate the growth.
When you say "charge density" I think it would be more accurate to say "current density". I did this would a resistor or microscope and with copper sulfate. It worked but yours looks better. As usual. Excellent Vid.
It's really nice to see, I like. Indeed most people don't have the requiered equipement... so thanks for sharing your video, it's great. Crystals of any materials are always beautiful to look : )
dear god if this isn't beauty in it's purest form I don't know what is. thank you again nerdrage for absolutely enthralling me in one of your elplorations into the amazing things that happen around us every day. :D
I've always wanted to watch one of these timelapsed for sometjing like say, copper refining where you have impire copper and use electrical separation to remove the impurities, just a timelapsed reduction of the anode.
I was watching a nova video about fractals and when the current was used without the resister, you could totally see the crystals forming like fractals. I am sure that slowly grown silver was grown in fractals manner as well, but it is harder to see with larger structures.
i tried this with a .0141 molar solution of silver nitrate and i also a different anode and a different cathode. My anode was zinc wire and my cathode was iron wire. It worked even without the silver wires.
@rainbowsalads nothing, the price of silver is mostly reflective of demand and the cost of refining. The cost of refining itself is based on labor and chemicals. The cost of energy for the whole process is actually very small. So unlimited energy would probably have a very minor effect compared to natural market fluctuations of supply and demand. An energy intensive commodity, like aluminum metal, is more linked to energy prices.
that was a beautiful demonstration! I agree - prob, no, make that DEFINITELY my fav subscribed content, along with periodic and sixty. Nurdrage, you're a legend!!! :)
@HoboUnderTheBridge in theory, a crystal can be grown to be meters in size. But the cost would be enormous due to the large number of parameters that must be controlled and the innumerable number of inevitable failures.
@insaneperson7766 no, we're not making silver from nothing. The silver came from the anode and the silver nitrate solution. So the total amount of silver is always the same. Elements cannot be made chemically, only converted between forms.
@CoNiGMa yeah, the silver is coming out of the silver nitrate solution and the silver metal anode (off camera). While i could melt it down afterward, if i really wanted to do that i'd just melt silver bars directly, far cheaper than going through this slow process of electrochemical crystallization.
Fantastic! I am SO impressed! Where chem and physics meet. I can't wait to try this for m class. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and making it quite clear (I think) on how to do this ourselves. cheers!
Wonderful footage. You should try some other crystallisations with other chemicals like potassium permanganate, not necessarily by electrochem. I didn't see a lot of crystallisation at this small scale during my degree. I'd do it myself but I lack a decent camera/microscope!
In a way, the crystals are following the maximum charge density not just through the existing crystals, but also the solution. As it a result, the crystals look like solid silver lightning bolts.
I'm actually running a silver refining cell, using a the same method. I heard adding copper nitrate will make larger crystals grow. Seems to be true because as my solution gets more copper nitrate in it from the impure silver, the crystals seem to be growing larger and less spindley.
