Alex Barberis
Wonder of ScienceThis is what fine table salt looks like magnified 150 times with an electron microscope.
Credit: Todd Simpson/UWO Nanofab
CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Matt Willemsen@wonderofscience Doesn't look fine at all to me.
Marc Jacobs@wonderofscience In a FIB no less. Someone is having fun with the [expensive] tools.
Patty Kimura@wonderofscience Cubes! Salt cubes! Is this shape natural or a result of the milling process?
Sylvia Wenmackers 🦉🍀@pattykimura
Sodium chloride naturally forms cubical crystals. (The specific crystalline form is called face-centered cubic.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_chloride
The small crystals in table salt form spontaneously by drying salt solution rapidly in a vacuum chamber. (Starting from seawater leads to 'sea salt'.)
These crystals can become much larger, and you can grow salt crystals at home.
@wonderofscience
Sodium chloride naturally forms cubical crystals. (The specific crystalline form is called face-centered cubic.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_chloride
The small crystals in table salt form spontaneously by drying salt solution rapidly in a vacuum chamber. (Starting from seawater leads to 'sea salt'.)
These crystals can become much larger, and you can grow salt crystals at home.
@wonderofscience
@SylviaFysica @wonderofscience I read a couple of "Grow your own salt crystals", and I had a dumb question I couldn't easily find the answer to:
Is this actually "growing" more salt or is this simply "reforming" the existing salt into a different shape?
"Growing" salt confuses me. I'm not scientific, just a word nerd.
Iwillyeah@pattykimura if you think about NaCl, you have sodium and chloride, neither of which is salt, coming together to form a salt that wasn't there before. I don't know if what you were reading wanted you to create salt or simply refine it from an existing source though. Growing it does sound more like distilling it out of somewhere it is already spread out and concentrating, imo. Not sciency either though.
@pattykimura The atoms are already there in the solution, but they are only called a salt when they get together in a specific configuration (a specific type of crystal).
In that sense it's much like other types of growth, such as plants: the nutrients are already in the air and in the soil, but they come together to make a new solid form.
Hope this helps. :)
@wonderofscience
In that sense it's much like other types of growth, such as plants: the nutrients are already in the air and in the soil, but they come together to make a new solid form.
Hope this helps. :)
@wonderofscience
@SylviaFysica @wonderofscience Brilliant. I never thought of plants that way, as reformatted existing organic and inorganic stuff combined in a particular pattern to eggplant. Are we that way, too?
Makes me rethink the very personal interconnectedness and dependency we share with everything on the planet, with a dollop of extra-terrestrial sunbeams.
Just a poet, not a scientist. So, I am delighted to have my world upended and find a new world that's always been right in front of me.
Thanks!
@pattykimura Yes, our bodies are definitely that way, too! It's amazing to think how different the time spans are of 'stuff' residing in our bodies: from very short (water in all of our cells, which we lose constantly, for instance by breathing) to very long (calcium in our bones and teeth, but also certain parts of the brain IIRC).
@wonderofscience
@wonderofscience
geobeck@SylviaFysica @pattykimura @wonderofscience
When I was young, I remember creating sugar crystals by suspending a string in a super-saturated solution and letting it cool. Doing sugar and salt side by side would be a great way to show the different shapes that crystals can take.
When I was young, I remember creating sugar crystals by suspending a string in a super-saturated solution and letting it cool. Doing sugar and salt side by side would be a great way to show the different shapes that crystals can take.
JustKathyYou'd think it would stick to food better as a square, instead of bouncing off and landing all over the table.
AlicePaul
Obsolete@wonderofscience It looks salty.
Doug 🌈🇨🇦 
@wonderofscience
You will be asaltimated, resistance is futile.
You will be asaltimated, resistance is futile.
ira
Datenegassie ❌@wonderofscience That's some good greebling
Jason Perseus has moved
Robert Merlo@wonderofscience Very cool!
Pixel Dunn@wonderofscience looks like that square fractal xD
Buster McNutt@wonderofscience
What manufacture dual-beam is this? I'm guessing Hitachi.
What manufacture dual-beam is this? I'm guessing Hitachi.
@wonderofscience tesseracts?
michaeltruly@wonderofscience dang that's some minecraft in real life.
(((Jann Gobble)))🏳️🌈@wonderofscience Hey @Verso! It's a D&D die! ⬆️ 😂
Kelly Guimont@jann I'll get my crayon and start coloring it in...
BrownsBay@wonderofscience Cubic crystal system #crystallography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_crystal_system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_crystal_system
Teedee@wonderofscience so basically all miniature tesseracts
AT-AT Assault 🏳️⚧️We are the Sodium Chloride.
You will be seasoned.
Resistance is futile.
Steady State Sounds (Brian)@wonderofscience Salt looks like Dice of the Necronomicon!
The image reminds me of the time I bought an old specimen of salt from the Detroit salt mine. It was/still is a beautiful cube. When my daughter came home I said, “Look at this old salt cube.” I was shocked when she took it out of the box and took a big lick.
I was not at all amused, but we laugh about it today.
That salt specimen was never displayed for obvious reasons.
ian DM borton
Ian Applebaum@wonderofscience “We are the BORG”
Michael Frasca
Manifest Irony@wonderofscience
You say that but I know Minecraft when I see it.
You say that but I know Minecraft when I see it.
Tim N7KOMArrow Video GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY
Discover & share this Arrow Video GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.
mmby@wonderofscience is it really only tablesalt or is this covered with something, like a gold nanofilm?
chris@wonderofscience this looks more like a cube texturing blender tutorial
Panama Red@wonderofscience I thought maybe they were Dungeons and Dragons dice at first, but then I thought, "Nah ... not enough sides."
dr_barnowlRESISTANCE IS FUTILE. YOU WILL BE SALINATED.
JoeJoeTom 🏳️🌈🎶🪨💛🤍💜🖤@wonderofscience Looks like blocks from a ziggurat!
Jonathan HendryCareful you might summon tiny cenobites
JenX@wonderofscience The tiniest d6es. (And, I suppose, the tastiest)
BillSaysThis@wonderofscience @jamesthomson Dice alert 🤣
James Thomson@BillSaysThis @wonderofscience The saltiest of dice throws :)
Darrel PlantI rolled an 18!
europlus 
@wonderofscience @briankrebs Hey, they have sunken faces…just like me 😞
⁂Krafty⁂ #NoKings
klangspiel@wonderofscience sceners find a new favorite fractal challenge (impossible)
Michael Gemar@wonderofscience @gemelliz Why are all the faces indented in the middle? I would have thought the crystals would grow around their centre.
Pam Phillips@wonderofscience They look like they have runes inscribed in them.
Torrone 🥔 🍄Tu savais qu'il y avait un QR code sur les grains de sel ? ⬆️
Troll@Torrone
C'est des qr 3d ... On sait pas quelle face photographier ^^
C'est des qr 3d ... On sait pas quelle face photographier ^^
Si ça se trouve, ça renvoie vers un rickroll !
textcontainer@wonderofscience It's the Borg! They're the same picture!
David H. McCoy
Barry C
Phil 🦊 ⏚Some ancient Greeks were on to something when they thought matter was made out of regular polyhedrons.