You mean like the Dude Perfect guys who lead their audience into believing they get the first attempt at a trick shot on the first try. When it probably took a hundred if not, more attempts but they always edit out the fails..
Watching this video my brain was screaming about using vapor deposition. Living somewhere it is currently negative 25C, I have massive crystals like that growing on every vent of the house.
I know it's getting cold where I live when I get frost developing on every screw and nail head that leads to an exterior wall. And one of the most beautiful sights you'll ever see is the massive hoar frost crystals that grow during a particularly long cold snap. 🌨
A long time ago I made a presentation about crystalline symmetry and taxonomy. And even though I forgot everything, I still jump out in joy every time I read something like the P6cm or m3m (I hope that's a thing).
Hi! I came from the Physics subreddit. I really liked your demonstrations. What is the size of the grains showed at 4:48? I mean, how much zoom is the photo?
most of the columnar grains from the zoom-in are on the order of 1-5 mm across. I was using the kit 50mm sony lens with a macro tube for a bit closer focus. At the edges of the "boule" there are some large grains, like one entire side that was pushed against the edge of the container was a grain, but it wasn't very thick, and as you get closer to the middle it gets messier. The edges probably nucleated by themselves early and some of them got big before colliding
Ooh! I have used a modified Bridgman technique to grow large naphtha crystals before. My family HATES mothballs now.🤮 I like to play with scintillators and particle detectors. Your explanations are so clear that you are filling a few of my gaps in crystalline ordering and thermal transfer and I am sure other things by the time I make it through all your videos. I once sat in prison for 15 years so I ordered and consumed books like "Geochemical Kinetics" and Pauling's "General Chemistry". They opened my eyes and mind more than highschool ever did. I get tingles up my spine when I get an idea that lets me apply this type of knowledge. I am an applied science junkie.
I've always wanted to learn more about material science, thank you for sharing your knowledge of it! I've been hooked ever since that amazing bubble demo. Also thank you for sharing the things that didn't work. Totally agree that's an important part of science.
@@AlphaPhoenixChannel much agreed! I'm especially interested in all the cool stuff going on with 2d materials like magic angle graphene and this work I saw back in October: www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201012115949.htm The TL;DR is that by stacking a monolayer 1 degree twisted from a bilayer and supercooling, an applied electric field could switch between it behaving like twisted bilayer graphene or twisted double bilayer graphene. And in the latter case it exhibited electrically tunable ferromagnetism 🤯 If you're ever trying to think of a video topic, definitely would be interested in something on graphene or other 2d materials.
RU-vid is weird. My first thought was: Cool a new science channel that is actually interesting... let's check the videos.... wait this channel is already seven years old.... why did youtube hide this from me for all these years... at least now I can binge watch everything. Very informative channel with clear explanations, thank you sir, I will stick around!
I almost want to share this vid with my materials sciences professor! lol thanks for the extra articles and some great visualizations and explanations ^_^
I saw your gerrymandering video first and thought okay that's kind of cool and now I'm bringing this channel. There are so many videos alone about f... Ice but every video still gives new info.
If the subjects weren't incredibly interesting, I probably would still watch your videos just because of your energy. It's so fun listening to people that are truly passionate about something. You're cool.
What a great science communicator. I don't generally like science shows (in the sense that I don't enjoy them), but the algorithm has fed part 1 and part 2 to me faithfully, and they've both kept me long enough that I've made it to the end, so I guess take a comment and like and let's hope this channel grows. I don't particularly want more of this content, but I think this is a great niche that deserves to grow.
Yeah, I'm always surprised that ice is a good thermal insulator, but I guess the igloo idea is pretty solid. The aluminium idea was really good though.
Yeah - it surprised me too. One sentence that got cut from this video also pointed out that the seed crystal was oriented with the C axis up and down, meaning that all of the heat to freeze had to go through the slowest direction
One crystal related project area: Doing the same process of crystal growing + refining that is used for silicon or similar materials, but with sugar or something easier. So the "Molten Drawing" and "Float Zone Refining and all that. (Granted i just read some wikipedia pages! So all those terms may be wrong idk)
Essentially those "Sugar Growing Projects" in elementary school science fair, but cranked up to 11, and used to teach modern crystal growth techniques, instead of "crystals are a thing".
Thanks for sharing your process! I love seeing the fantastic and amazing things that can happen in this world but I also love seeing the 'failures' (any time when an outcome is different from a prediction) because that's where we get to discover something we didn't know before and expand our knowledge of the world. Achieving the goal is like chocolate sauce and the stuff you learn along the way is the ice-cream. Ice cream on its own is alright, but chocolate sauce on its own isn't that great. So thanks for giving us the ice cream!
A few TECs on a container and a bigger one on the aluminum bar would allow you to grow the crystal without needing to be in the freezer. You could also very easily monitor and control the temperature.
Hey, I recently found your channel and I love the content you are making! I am thinking of going to graduate school for material science so seeing the experiments you do with crystal growth and grain structures is really inspiring. I am excited to see the next video, and in the meantime I am going to look into the Bridgman method and other ways to control crystal growth.
Awesome! MatSci is an amazing field at the intersection of so many others. What are you studying in undergrad? The Bridgman method is how most of our substrates are grown - they make a big cylindrical boule of something like Gallium Arsenide, then slice it into thin round wavers we can grow on. To be specific, I think they use a "horizontal Bridgman" technique, and I don't know what their growth rates are - certainly a WHOLE lot faster than our MBE growth rates!
@@AlphaPhoenixChannel I studied mechanical engineering in undergrad and it wasn't until this last year that I realized I wanted to continue learning about the atomic properties of materials. When I learned that the reason metals have elastic deformation is because the atoms are literally stretching the bonds before they slip and plastically deform, my mind was blown! I've always thought the way metal boules are cast is fascinating. The level of purity we are able to achieve nowadays is incredible!
Now I'm just watching through a bunch of your videos, and I realize you degree is also in materials. That explains why you're so good at explaining it! Cheers, MatE!
love your videos please don't never stop sharing and passing on really amazing knowledge an hard work that you put into this I hope and continue to see your videos shine and progress!!
10:46 for like 20 secs I did not understand a word he said but just the way he speaks with the Pauses and tone for some reason I feel like I understand him.
When you pipetted water on to the seed crystal on the aluminum block, some of the water was in direct contact with the aluminum.(it was not all on your seed crystal) That could be how you ended up getting new crystals.
A long time ago I saw a tv show, maybe how it's made, where they covered how blocks of clear ice are made for ice carving. The process is simple, get a big ole vat of water, make it cold, and move the water constantly with a pump. The main goal of this is that it takes more energy to form a crystal with contaminants, so with the temperature held at about 0C, and the water always moving, it's too hard for contaminants to freeze into the crystal, and it's too hard for voids to form. Only good pure water can join the crystal, and it does so evenly. This method may be able to increase the margin of error with your technique even as the water cools off, by lowering the temperature of spontaneous crystallization just a little bit further below the temperature of monocrystaline growth. I imagine though that it will also make the tank more efficient at conducting the heat in the water to the walls, making it cool off faster.
Could you supercool the water without freezing it, then introduce a single-crystal seed? Kinda like how you can put a bottle of water in the freezer and every now and then it will stay as metastable liquid below the freezing point.
As I recall, single-crystalline silcon ingot growers rotate the seed in one direction (say clockwise) and the molten silcon in the cricible anti-clockwise, and slowly pull the seed upward at a rate that defines the diameter of the ingot. Could the same be done with the water "seed" and chilled water "ingot"?
I collect rain water in barrels in my backyard. When the temperature is just right, the water forms a thick ice sheet which crumbles into long approximately hexagonal prisms
Well thats awesome, that bubble demonstration and dislocations. The same applies to steel! I did know that, but thats a great way to visualize that, and that explains different properties of welds epending how hot it was and how quick it was cooled. Great channel! I'm happy i got here, you have a new sub ;)
I’d attempt to do exactly what you did here, except with a peltier cooler and heat-sink atop the aluminium block, and in a refrigerator set to 1-3C or so. Also you’re fast approaching 2^14 !
A small compressor might also be an option, if only for the thermal efficiency. An easier method might be an aluminium (bottomed) container full of salted ice-water, though you’d need to calculate how much ice would be required to solidify the water beneath.
Might be a cool idea to explore using a ThermoElectric Cooler (TEC) connected to a liquid cooled heat sink . That way you can literally control the flow of energy out of the freezing water
your explanation of the defects melting first explains how long vertical crystals of ice can form on frozen lakes as they begin to thaw. Look up "candled ice".
We invented a slush drinks machine that doesn’t need a scraper, instead forming ice in a recirculating flow in a pipe, as the heat transfer is set up to create dendritic ice that is broken off by flow in a pipe. The heat flux and thermal diffusivity together control whether you get wall ice or dendritic ice. If the thermal diffusivity is low and the heat flux is low enough to avoid big thermal gradients, even if the wall is the only cooling surface, an instantaneous quanta of energy is easier to donate to the surrounding fluid so ice grows dendritically. Maybe this is what you encountered?
The thought of someone trying to sputter ice with more ice is so funny to me. I know vapor deposition describes any process which uses, ya know, deposition of a vapor - but still. Tststststs "Ok guys, ice is ready"
Perhaps you could use dry ice to cool the aluminum plate. You could keep the apparatus about the same, with a box of dry ice on top in thermal contact with the bar. Then either turn down the freezer or put it in the fridge.
If you're not careful, some of your videos are gonna end up being used an a college material science course. Honestly though one of the best visualizations of grain boundaries I've seen.
Besides using the dendrites to see the crystal grain domains and orientations, you can probably use polarized sunglasses and/or polarized light. (Not sure because I haven't tried it.)
Could a Peltier module on the aluminum work? To keep the water outside the fridge and only cool it through the cristal touching the aluminum and the liquid water
I've been binge watching your videos and I just realized why your videos reminded me of something. Do you watch the RU-vid channel "Knowing Better"? Your style reminds me of his style, except science instead of politics and history.
Do you think the convections movements in the water could create dentrites? Some convection cells would appear and cool the whole water recipient and then, because the thermal isolation with the outside is not perfect, some dentrites could have been created somewhere else. I would suggest to try the same experiment but with the aluminum bar at the bottom of the recipient. Might be a very tricky setup though...
So to my metallurgical mind, you hot-shorted a block of ice. For others: hot shortness in steels occurs when there is a low-melting-point phase mixed in with the steel (iron sulphides, copper* or tin*) that is liquid at rolling temperatures (900ºC-1200ºC). These liquid phases migrate to the boundaries of the steel crystals (or 'grains') and lubricate them, allowing the grains to more easily move relative to each other and reducing the hot strength of steel. *Copper or tin are normally soluble in steel but aren't soluble in iron oxide. If the surface of the hot steel oxidises, the copper/tin comes out of solution as a liquid and penetrates into the grain boundaries of the steel below. This type of hot-shortness shows up as surface defects.
Have you looked at how ice sculptors make their ice, they use a cold plate with a bin of water on top and a small circulation pump. The ice forms from the bottom to the top due to the agitation of the water stopping the growth of crystals on the container sides in adition to the sides and top of the water being above freezing.
along with wrapping your ice chamber in foam and a towel, add an electric blanket (very low wattage) so the outer parts don't freeze inward. That way, the "coldness" is only coming from the crystal you want to form.
Can the water be held still in the refrigerator, at 2-3C, instead of the freezer? Maybe alcohol could be pumped through the heat sink below 0C to encourage crystal growth and discourage dendritic growth. Then you can go really slow.
Nice process. Instead of a magnifier glass, why not use the 3 laser method on each axis to melt the center of the ice. Similar to the acrylic bubble art. As you also mentioned, the pressure change as it is freezing would affect growth. Would a counterweight of the aluminum block also allow equalizing the pressure at the freezing point in the chamber to equalize the surface pressure of the water? I look forward to the next video.
I once left a water bottle on the porch and when I went to get it the next morning it was liquid but the moment I touched it the whole thing instantly froze from the top down. Very cool effect. I wonder if this creates a polycrystalline structure or perhaps it produces a single crystal structure as the ice builds from the top down very rapidly? Sadly I was not able to repeat this phenomenon after several attempts. I read somewhere distilled water works best, the fewer contaminants the better.
It’s almost certainly polycrystalline and dendritic - my last video about “hearing ice freeze” is exactly the same process you describe, just with a bit more control over the process!
What about hypercooled water seeded with a single grain crystal after it's been hypercooled, assuming you don't have nucleation sites for the water to crystalize on its own, can that work?
Would a TEC thermoelectric module work, if it was set up to pump the heat way from the metal block, and to the water> Maybe with some heat pipes from on old laptop? I really don't know, I don't really have any intention of trying this myself, since I am already investing my time too thin on my own experiments and projects. Just thinking out loud. It is fun to think. Looking forward to the rest of the experiment. Maybe one day I will give it a try.
