The moment he started talking I immediately knew he was swiss, as a person who grew up in switzerland myself the accent is so familiar ahahah I cringed a bit not gonna lie, but apart from that he really did great!
My experiences with academics in these hyper-specific fields of research is that they are always 150% up for talking about their work to anyone who'll listen
@@lewismassie literally. That's what I find so funny about any conspiracy theory that assumes that scientists are "hiding the TRUTH from us" like smh most academics won't shut up about their research, I promise you they're not hiding anything 😂😂
ive worked at the Maldon Salt factory and I can honestly say that you made this whole process a hell of a lot more interesting than those at the factory did.
Bless you Dr. Fontana. You didn't have to force yourself to speak English, and you didn't have to prepare slide shows to help us understand better, yet you did. It truly is an honour to be able to learn from you about salt.
@@anggraenix3566 “Be silent! Keep your forked tongue behind your teeth. I have not passed through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a witless worm!”
the experts are really keen on telling everyone what they do. its their passion. You could ask nearly every phd student or doctor at a university for a chat about their topic. most will make time for you.
Dr Fontana seemed very excited to tell us about this topic, makes me really happy seeing him talk so passionately about it Edit : Ohh thanks for the likes, didn’t thought anyone would see the comment
@@NathanTAK hello nepan, can you tell me what your problem with my comment is ? because I don’t understand what you mean tbh. I’m not a native english speaker so please don’t mind my spelling mistakes.
I reached out to the Nile Red RU-vid channel to see if the channel would be interested in taking this project on. The guy who performs the chemistry experiments on that channel is always fascinating and entertaining much like yourself. I would love to see the two of you do something together. This sounds like a perfect crossover project.
11:44 I've made tons of salt crystals just like those! I've only made hopper crystals accidentally, but in the past I've tried to make big "cubes" many times, with limited success. I think the vodka helped dilute the ions and made the crystals grow more slowly, basically the opposite of what you are trying to do. If I were to give you any tips for growing hopper crystals, it would be to try to emulate the fleur de sal method a bit more, maybe insulating / cooling the bottom of the bowls and putting a fan over the top of the bowl. Also, if you're patient, I don't recommend making supersaturated solutions by heating them up and putting more salt in. That tends to really mess stuff up when you want a specific crystal growth. I can also recommend having a PURE salt solution - like, REALLY pure. I know it doesn't look to clean to see them growing salt over literal dirt, but I can assure you any contaminants / anti-caking agents will greatly affect the crystal's nucleation, as well as tendencies to agglomerate / form a raft. An easy way to do this is by using a pure pickling salt, and running the solution through a coffee filter right before pouring it out into bowls - if you're not already. However, since Maldon uses "sea salt" then normal pickling salt will not be the same. Sea salt has other ions in it like Mg and Ca, and these will also affect the growing tendencies. Not all sea salt is the same, though, so it would be really handy if you could analyze some of Maldon's sea salt to see roughly what concentrations of elements they have. You might also be able to do some undercover investigating by asking them where specifically they source theirs! Anyways, good luck! Salt crystals are VERY finnicky, but replicating something that's been perfected to a T should be at least doable. I want to grow bigger, clearer cubes, like natural Halite crystals, but they take years of water filtering through rocks to grow like that 😭
I am no expert, but an idea, if you can find someone with a spectrograph and just measure the crystals, you could make your own brine from the same ratios. Dunno if it would work, but an experiment to try.
I just saw a post on reddit explaining how to make those pyramids, you need constant 60-70 degree celsius and alum powder to mitigate the agitation of the crystal on the surface of the brine solution when heated.
If you are looking for other things to try, my first addition to your method would be testing out different speeds on a magnetic stirrer. Small initial investment, but a hands free agitator that works from the bottom up -- not something that you stick into the brine from the top and stir, which would mess with your prospective hopper crystals floating at the surface.
As a Swiss person myself, I was really happy when I heard Dr Fontana's Swiss accent in one of your videos ^^ Really interesting topic as well, great job Mr Ragusea!
funny that adam has to explain hoppers as something from industry but most people under 25 will know it from minecraft. edit: In theory you don't need to do the skimming part if you can get the water thin enough right? if you can find the height of the hopper crystals when they sink then just make your brine solution super thin. that is probably extremely hard to do because of water's surface tension causing it to stay together even on a perfectly flat surface. the other option is to find an additive that decreases water's surface tension dramatically, is non toxic to humans, and doesn't bond/interfere with salt hopper crystals forming.
@@Super123456789ki wasn't aware it was an industrial mechanism since in my language (Russian) hopper was translated as "voronka" which just means a funnel, and simple small plastic funnels were just a common tool in my eyes so I didn't think much of it. Didn't think there are other funnel like instruments that the minecraft hopper could be based on. So yes, I didn't know about what a hopper from Minecraft actually is, here's the reason lol.
I love your videos Adam, you are a great model for journalists, you try hard to be unbiased, highly informed and you cover important and interesting topics many people dont even consider
As a chemist, I absolutely love videos like this because it's always fascinating seeing where two of my biggest passions intersect. And I ALWAYS learn something whenever I watch one of your videos. I'm super grateful that you clearly take the time and effort to truly understand a subject before you bring it to us, and it's refreshing seeing content that's so well-informed. And I'm not an expert (though I do grow a lot of crystals in lab), but my best guess at trying to solve the salt crystal dilemma would be to use supersaturated solution just to initiate the crystal growth, and then when you use it to seed another solution, make it less concentrated than fully saturated. I like to get my solutions to the point just before saturation and let evaporation take it down the rest of the way.
About a month ago the other cooking youtuber, the French guy Alex, did a video on this flakey salt and he was actually succesful in producing hollow crystals
He cites this blog, which recommends using alum to "calm" the surface of the water. The author demonstrates by putting a cork in normal and alum-treated water, and the results are astonishing
If it's agitation that can prevent agglomeration, I wonder if you could evaporate brine over a vibrating plate, or even in one of those ultrasonic cleaner tanks to keep then separate
Hey Adam, I recently uncovered a big can of worms that I think could be a classic Ragusea research topic. It has to do with how often people go to the store and buy groceries. Living in American suburbs (Portland, OR in case it matters), I grew up with the family going to the store every 1-2 weeks, loading up fridge freezer and pantry, and then eating from the stockpile until it's no longer practical. Recently it has come to my attention that a very large portion of the world buys their groceries day-of or day-before. The topic arose from a discussion (argument) about urban planning and transportation. Cities in the US, Canada, etc are primarily low-density and designed for cars, whereas in Europe and many other places, they tend to be higher density and lean primarily on mass transit. I expressed dismay at how one could possibly get their 2 weeks' supply of groceries while relying on light rail, and this was the first many of them had heard of such a thing. This lead to a bit of mutual culture shock. They couldn't imagine how I could keep 2 weeks' worth of bread (7 loaves for 2 people) fresh. I couldn't imagine anyone eating that much bread. I'll buy 1 loaf of sourdough and have real trouble getting through it in 2 weeks. They imagined the only reason one might shop for more than 1 day of food was because it takes 45 minutes for an American to drive to the grocery store (a fashionable myth that probably comes from LA and NYC having a duopoly on media). Whereas to most Americans I know, the only reason one would schlep to the store every single day would be due to not owning a car for whatever exotic reason ($8/gal gas, roads designed circa Caesar or Stalin, etc). All this leads to some interesting thoughts and questions. How much does something as seemingly unrelated as road planning affect our diets? When you have no choice but to get your food fresh every day, there's a lot less demand for something that'll be shelf-stable for weeks. Which method leads to more food waste, the one which gives food more time to go bad, or the one in which more foods are use-it-or-lose-it? Speaking of food waste, create less of it with the sponsor of today's comment, HelloFresh! The Europeans I spoke to tended to think I was lying when I said my lettuce stayed fresh for 2 weeks. Does that mean we're storing it differently, or are the lettuces different (GMOs, cold chain, etc)? Is this even a difference between the US and Europe, or are there large populations living both ways everywhere? Is there a nation-level correlation between car ownership and consumption of frozen and processed foods? And most importantly, how in the name of all that is holy can people eat that much bread and still be healthy?
Some of that sounds like a master's thesis/project! I'm based in sociology, but some of that could tie into my background too :) Especially when you consider who has access to closer (and sometimes better) grocery stores
@@FebbieG Perhaps a bit of that as well. The specific person I was talking to about the bread (from Norway, I think?) did say that he and his partner had bread with every single meal. Still a big shock in my book. But I probably eat 4x as much meat as they do, which I'm told is a peculiarity of North American diets.
i know its been a couple months since the comment, but talking to a couple people from Europe and a few spots and Asia it seems that we keep our fridges and such WAYYYY colder than elsewhere. Like to us in the good ol U. S. of A., their fridges feel more like cool pantries to us, and our fridges feel almost like freezers to them, mostly because they almost are.
Hi Adam. Let me speculate about why your ethanol experiment produced solid crystals: the surface tension of ethanol is only about 1/3 that of water. Maybe what's going on is that the ethanol molecules are creeping up over the edge of the hopper (bringing sodium and chlorine ions with them) and into the interior while the hopper is still floating on the water/ethanol mixture. If this is in fact happening, you might get a better result by reducing the concentration of ethanol in your solution (e.g. try 3 parts water to 1 part ethanol).
@@francescotabarroni6901 no way. Just origins, maybe Italian. I'm swiss Italian, I can tell from his accent. His mother tongue is definitely swiss German
This is a very interesting question, crystal eng is hard stuff. Have you tried seeding with Maldon salt? Here’s something I might try: obtain a saturated (but not super saturated) salt solution at room temp in very very clean water (distilled and put though a .25 micron filter) with extremely pure salt (>99.99%) in a dust free environment if possible on a brand new glass Pyrex dish (no scratches for nucleation). Cool down the solution to ~34-40 F and carefully put 5-6 crystals a time of the maldon crystals on the surface start growing crystals put back in the fridge and wait 1-2 hours checking every 30 min or so but not touching the dish.
@@TheTheRay you might be right, but I think alcohol would be a “bad” solvent for NaCl which should make crystallization/precipitation easier/faster potentially.
Alex just did it. I think the composition of the salt has a lot to do with the pyramid shape. I tried Alex's process and I was forming cubes that float. They were flaky but they were too small. They were sinking before they could get big (because of the shape) so I had to harvest them while still floating.
I wonder if the crystals respond to electrostatic forces differently than the solution? Perhaps gravity could be somewhat offset if the crystals could be charged slightly and attracted upwards towards an opposite charge (or repelled from below). Diamagnetic forces are incredibly weak but who knows how they might alter crystal growth. Be interesting to see. Or sonic levitation that will act upon different shapes in different ways, but not the solution? Have you tried running the crystallization in a partial vacuum to lower the solution temperature, and hence Brownian motion? Perhaps growth will change under exposure to different frequencies of light as forming crystals might build up a charge. Or go the opposite and try growing crystals in a centrifuge. This shit is so cool!
Hey Adam I'm a material science student and I have a crystallography exam tomorrow lol. I have some ideas if you're interested. First I'd try supersaturated solution at elevated temp but not boiling. Drop a smaller pan full of ice water on top and see if you can get crystal growth on that substrate. I'd also try a pan full of supersaturated solution, about an inch deep. Drop it in the fridge for a few hours and see what kind of crystal growth you see. More ideas but I think a chilled substrate with a hot solution has some potential
I'm going to try this with my kids. To maximize the rate of precipitation and minimize the sinking: - pour the hot saturated solution out just a few mm deep on a sheet pan - ice packs under the sheet pan - very dry air and/or a fan?
I've worked and hung out with a lot of people from mid to eastern Europe and honestly it didn't even register that he was reading from a script. His English is fantastic! I hope he's having a wonderful day
The best hopper crystal formation happens right at the beginning of precipitation, where the salt concentration in the brine is at the absolute peak. My hypothesis is that this extremely high salt concentration is what helps form the irregular hopper shape. However, as the hoppers slowly form, the salt concentration in the brine is also reduced and no longer supersaturated. This low concentration causes more regular crystal formation (i.e. not hoppers). I would build a small low pressure water circulation system to make sure all the brine is constantly supersaturated.
Making the crystals are fairly easy. You just use a special mesh floating on the surface as a starter, the mesh keeps the crystals separated you then lift the mesh when you get crystals to your likening shake them off and repeat. This process requires fine control of the solution level but over all it’s pretty easy to do with the right machine
I live in Seaside where Lewis and Clark had their salt camp in 1805 so I’ve taken an interest in salt making. A few things I noted: 1. Have you considered asking Jacobsen Salt in Portland ? They also make hopper salt. 2. Hopper crystals form when edge growth is faster than flat surface growth. Using a supersaturated brine will cause this to happen since the ions want to crash out of solution quickly. Also note that Maldon users overhead heaters on their salt trays. This encourages evaporation to make the edges grow faster. Lastly, I’d wager a lower relative humidity will also make for faster hopper growth. 3. Agglomeration will occur if you let hopper crystals sit. I concur that light agitation will keep crystals in motion and prevent agglomeration since they are not in contact with each other long enough to join.
I teach chemistry and at times the 'lattice' in solid state physics. I knew everything that this video had in but I still watched it because its fun when Adam explains in ways even a layman could understand.
I think the difference with yours to the one I saw that worked, is that he kept his fairly warm and started a little more diluted, like sea salt and evaporated it down till crystals form.
Already knew Mr Fontana is Swiss from the first word. But i guess it would be the same when i talk English. ^^ Very interesting video! After stumbling across the video fo Alex and this one, i want to try it myself. All that's left to say: Thanks to you both for this very interesting video! Cheers from Switzerland
I love the smirk on your face when you say (paraphrased) “the crunch when you bite into them!” You genuinely love salt and all its wondrous pleasures. Edit: I am just as excited and geeked out about salt and it’s funky/cool science!
I'm trying to loose weight, but was aching for a salty snack...so I was literally snacking some salt crystals when this video popped up in my feed....wtf ragusea? now I'm playing with my food, searching for tiny pyramids!
That’s a great way to lose weight l! When I’m “bored hungry” I’ll eat a small amount of something with very strong flavors. It satisfies the desire to eat without actual taking in that many calories.
@@joshdoesstuff763 I prefer food in general that way too. It's far nicer to have a small exquisite dessert than a large quantity of some dessert that is quantity over quality. Then again that might be an ADHD novelty seeking (for sensory information) thing for me.
When I go to the coast, I bring home 2 or 3 buckets of sea water. I filter it, and start boiling it. It comes to a point where some fine white powder comes out of solution. It doesn't taste salty so I'm guessing its Calcium or something. After that Salt will start coming out of solution. It you stop boiling at the point crystals start forming on the surface and let it cool down slowly, you'll get a batch of flake salt. This happens in a pot with about 8 cups of brine. Once it gets down to about 2-3 cups it stops making flakes and just comes out as fine salt crystals. Its nice though. I get some flake salt, and some salt for the shaker. Sometimes I'll let the last couple cups sit and slowly evaporate for some bigger crystals and put in the salt grinder for fun. It is fun "making" your own sea salt though. I've got a campfire, I may as well have a pot of water boiling over it.
I have Maldon salt and it's pretty good to use as a seasoning and food added with it tastes better than traditional salt. I experimented by making simple lemon and salt drink using 3 4 different salts and the Maldon salt was just significantly better than any salt.
The Hopper Cubes from Space is simultaneously fascinating and horrifying if you're prone to imagining dystopian fiction when paired with the notion that food companies have a vested interest in producing more 'efficient' salt formations. In 2050, people will be paid $11 an hour to go on their daily commute to space to work at the Antigrav Salt Farm!
Yeah I was just thinking about mass production in orbit sent down on drop ships, getting the balance as cheap or cheaper than making the salt on earth, and people eat it in their Doritos without really thinking about it or smth. I mean in The Expanse people on Earth have bottled water from gas giants’ ice moons and stuff like that.
What about seeding the supersaturated water to initiate the hopper growth?? maybe time it out and scoop it up after every several minutes/hundred seconds??
In the glass surface experiment I think the pyramids grew but they ran out of brine, maybe pouring a thin film of brine onto a cold surface, monitoring it under microscope, and replenishing the brine each time it gets a bit dry might help. Kind reminds me how ice in factories is made by cooling layer after layer of water
Great video as always. Are you ever going to make that video you mentioned once about the health implications of types of pan surfaces or did that idea get scrapped? I’d be really interested if it’s still on the docket.
An interesting strategy might be using a solution that allows crystal growth without nucleation, then induce a seed crystal and slowly add more solution to adjust the water level at a point where further levels on the pyramid form.
Just saw Alex French Guy making a good video about this. Easily making some nice hopper crystals on a hot plate in a glass containers. Maybe worth a look.
I just love how transparent you are with your videos. I know that you have to disclose adds, but you didn't need to tell us that Mr Fontana was reading off of a script. I wouldn't have noticed, but it is still nice to know. Keep up the great work
I've read the most comments ever on this thread, so many thoughtful ideas. Mine to add would be to avoid being supersaturated at all. The driving force is too strong. To gain better control maybe hold temp steady above the saturation point, and let evaporation slowly take through the saturation point while contributing seed crystals. Heat above saturation but not long enough to dissolve the larger (desired) crystals but may dissolve some of the "thickness" off the part below the surface. This will dissolve small crystals. Cool again just a little to get material to add to the hopper crystal which may be a little lighter now. Repeat all very slowly never far from the saturation point. Maybe this could make thin walled hoppers that are taller but there are a lot of variables. On the other hand I have Maldon salt but I have trouble controlling the saltiness and I break the bigger crystals on purpose so it's more a curious interest than a culinary need imo. Thanks.
Dude, I'm not lying when I say I was Googling how to make flaky salt just this afternoon! Wanted some to sprinkle over tarts, but would never dare to buy those astronomically priced foreign brands. Thanks for the science lesson!
Float a dish of brine in an ultrasonic cleaner bath, adjust the settings to control for the frequency and intensity of the vibration. This may do what you described about the Maldan salt. Agitation. I theorize it will take a lower frequency at a relatively high intensity, rather than a high frequency, which might tear apart the crystal altogether, which would itself be an interesting experiment.
Cave of the Crystals or Giant Crystal Cave (Spanish: Cueva de los cristales) is a cave connected to the Naica Mine at a depth of 300 metres (980 ft), in Naica, Chihuahua, Mexico.The chamber contains giant selenite crystals (gypsum, CaSO4 • 2H2O), some of the largest natural crystals ever found.[2] The largest is 11.40 metres (37.4 ft), with a volume of about 5 cubic metres (180 cu ft), and an estimated mass of 12 tonnes.[1] When it was accessible, the cave was extremely hot, with air temperatures reaching up to 58 °C (136 °F)[3] with 90 to 99 percent humidity. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In middle school I decided to try to grow crystals for science project. In excitement, I started one with salt until my dad got me what I needed for the actual project. It was not fancy salt. Decades ago in a Third World country. There was one brand that said iodized salt on it that I had ever seen at that time. I was not expecting it to work because it wasn’t supposed to. Later I got fancy copper sulfate (bright blue), and forgot about the salt in the back of the cupboard. When I found them later, they had developed! Beautiful cubes, and you could see all the way in layers and layers of cubes going in pyramids with naked eye. The larger ones are over a cm big. Not that triangle shape though, complete cubes mostly but some are different shape too. I had inferred it wasn’t supposed to work much at all for regular salt, but for me processed table salt and tap water of dubious origins as part of a neglected science project worked so well! 🤷🏻♀️ I always wondered what the conditions were but never researched it much. This video was fun and nostalgic. I have those salt crystals to this day! (I didn’t become a chemist but I did become a scientist).
Agglomeration is caused by spontaneous nucleation. When a super-saturated solution is cooled, there is a window that forms, an upper and lower bound on salinity. Too high, and new nucleation sites form. You have to "steer" the crystallization process through this window such that it's not too saturated, while keeping the salinity homogeneous by agitating. If you agitate too vigorously, you break the crystals. What you should try is a stirring hotplate on a low setting, below the point a vortex forms. Just enough to prevent the upper layers from getting too saline from evaporation. Then, periodically scoop the crystals from the surface. Your knobs are going to be the agitation rate, the heat rate, how insulated the container is, how tall/wide the container aspect ratio is, and possibly forced evaporation with a fan.
I had huge hopper crystals grow in a clear plastic tub I was using as a mycelium incubator for grain spawn. I added salt to inhibit bacterial growth. After I removed the spawn the tub full of salt water sat for over a year and the water dried up. Some of the crystals where very large and pyramid shaped. Most of the salt conglomerated. I had about 20 huge crystals though. I'm guessing slightly larger than 1/4 inch or so.
I may habe an idea for growing such crystals: Leave saturated salt solution in a rather narrow and rather container, like a small drinking glas with high airflow over night and see what you get. For context I habe left some saturated brine after using it to dry a solution in a 100 ml beacer overnight in a fumehood. The next morning a big hopper agglomeration with just some junk stuck to the tip was in there. If you are interested I can provide the pictures. I have no idea whether I was lucky or if some rather toxic chemicals have played a part but hopefully it can be repeated.
Maldon is the best salt in my opinion. It's actualy quite cheap here in the UK, although obviously more expensive than 'table' salt (NaCl). I just use it for most things. Maybe wasteful, but its like £2.50 for a big pack - so like $3.40.
