Laura Howes
SellaTheChemistHello chemists! Do any of you have experience of growing #crystals of sulfur? I'm helping an artist to grow some - does anyone have a suggestions for strategies for getting blocks? #chemistry #sulphur #Sulfur #nfernuveru
Mathias Micheel@sellathechemist crystals like in rhombic sulfur (= hard) or like in monoclinic (needles and easy)? I've read the best way to grow rhombic sulfur crystals is via CS2, so I'd avoid it at all costs...
@buerviper Ha! I used to do the famous "Bellender Hund" demonstration (see my profile pic) that Liebig made (in)famous. An astonishing, wild demo that plays with every one of our senses. It typically resulted in my being splattered in a mixture of CS2 and nitric acid (especially the times I did that 3m tube at the Apollo Hammersmith). And a good lungful of NOx for good measure before, and SO2 after.
CS2 is rumoured to smell sweet when *very* pure. ๐
We'll try, of course.
Cc: @FaithfullJohn
John Faithfull ๐๐ช๐บ๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ณ๓ ฃ๓ ด๓ ฟ๐งกโ๐ปโ๐ฟ@sellathechemist @buerviper ๐ I somehow got some CS2 home as a teenage chemistry fiend, and I can still remember the stench. ๐ฑ #NeverAgain
@FaithfullJohn @buerviper LIghtweight! ๐คฃ
@buerviper PS I see you've got Thuringian warming stripes in your profile. One day I want to go and search for the prehistory of scientific glassblowing around Ilmenau and such like to seek out the ghosts of Geissler, Baumbach, Greiner and Friedrichs, etc. #ClassicKit
@sellathechemist now I feel bad I never cared about any of that in.the 9 years I've been living here๐
@buerviper Well, I've obsessed about #ClassicKit for some time. If you go back enough, scientific glassblowing always seems to end up back to the Glasshรผtten in Thuringia.
@sellathechemist @FaithfullJohn in any case, this recipe only needs a Sulfur saturated CS2 solution that you let super slowly evaporate over weeks and apparently, that gives you some crystals https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ed009p941.1
@buerviper @FaithfullJohn "A suitable label should be attachedโฆ". Which makes you wonder about WHAT HAPPENED?????
@sellathechemist or let nature do the work? I cristalli di Agrigiento nella Sicilia sono ๐ฅฐ https://www.mindat.org/gl/29130 Pretty sure that there are folk who fake these as well: their techniques might be the ones to look for?
@sellathechemist here's an example: https://www.mindat.org/mesg-629490.html#629507
This older thread has some more specific info that may be relevant: https://www.mindat.org/mesg-137286.html#137455 - the links seem to be dead, but may provide a useful starting point...
@sellathechemist You may well have come across this pape already: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/epdf/10.1021/ie00075a019
Not sure how convenient to use these solvents might be, but they are probably nicer than CS2! ๐ Would be really interesting to play at making sulfur crystals ๐ค #Envious
Not sure how convenient to use these solvents might be, but they are probably nicer than CS2! ๐ Would be really interesting to play at making sulfur crystals ๐ค #Envious
@FaithfullJohn You're a wonder. What a find!! We've got quite a few glymes around that could do with using upโฆ I might get the crystallizers to try one of these.
@FaithfullJohn arenโt they just!!!! ๐๐๐
We just donโt have geological time.
As it happens the artist wants to riff on the horrors of the Sicilian solfare where the carusi (child labourers) were worked to death. Thereโs an amazing book โNfernu veruโ with poems by Alessio di Giovanni and text by Vincenzo Consolo that I wanted to look at again but is inaccessible because of the ransomware disaster at the British Library.
glasspshr@sellathechemist @FaithfullJohn I have no clue but please let us know what you find out.
If I wasn't using my vacuum chamber for other stuff I'd be tempted to try it to make some ;)