• Question: whats been your favorite thing to create in the lab and why

    Asked by anon-199479 to Bryony on 12 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Bryony Hockin

      Bryony Hockin answered on 12 Mar 2019:

      My favourite thing to create in the lab is when I grow crystals. On my profile there is a picture of some very cool yellow crystals that I grew recently – they also glow blue in the dark! Very cool. I like growing crystals of chemicals because you never know what shape they will be.

Comments

  • Photo: Sumit

    Sumit commented on :

    Agree with Broyony.. I also love to make crystals in the laboratory..

    crystals are made of tiniest building block. They are like bricks stacked together in all three dimensions. If you want to know how strong your brick-house will be; you need to know how strong is one single brick.

    now all solids do not form crystals easily; that means all the bricks are not stacked in order, they stay randomly. now we need to stack them in an order; that is called crystal-making (crystallisation). We can make crystal in many ways; a) you can melt them and cool it slowly or b) you dissolve in water or some other liquid (solvent) and evaporate the liquid slowly etc. it can take hours or days to grow good quality crystal.You can try to grow sugar or salt crystal at home.

    crystals have beautiful shapes and you will love them when you make them. Coolest thing will be, you can now use X-ray to pass through your crystal. X-ray diffracts and gives tiny spots. You can then analyse spots with software, and you then solve the structure and you can be very proud of it. As I said, all properties of the solid is hidden in the crystal. So now you know everything about your solid. Isn’t it cool?