Crystal Birth

Well, those are just gorgeous.

The video is nothing but close up, sped up growth of reduced metal crystals from metallic ion solutions. There's no mention of what the anions are, but we do know that the crystals were grown via "electrocrystallization - Metal deposition actuated via electrodic reduction on the electrode surface. An electric current operates a metal deposition reaction."

But they're just pretty to watch...

Ecovative's Mushroom Tiny House

Edit: 12/20/24 - updated links to buy Ecovative kits.

How's your little mushroom house going to stand up to that kind of an attack?

From their MushroomTinyHouse.com website

Ecovative uses mycelium (mushroom “roots”) to bond together agricultural byproducts like corn stalks into a material that can replace plastic foam. We’ve been selling it for a few years as protective packaging, helping big companies replace thousands of Styrofoam (EPS), and other plastic foam packaging parts. We’re now working to develop new products for building materials.

Here’s how it works. Mushroom Insulation grows into wood forms over the course of a few days, forming an airtight seal. It dries over the next month (kind of like how concrete cures) and you are left with an airtight wall that is extremely strong. Best yet, it saves on material costs, as you don’t need any studs in the wall, and it gives you great thermal performance since it’s one continuous insulated wall assembly. The finished Mushroom® Insulation is also fire resistant and very environmentally friendly.

In all honesty, that's a pretty exciting swap - fiberglass insulation or styrofoam packaging material for mycelium. That's going to be a heck of a lot easier to dispose of at the end of the material's life.



This is the part that excites me most for a material science classroom. They offer grow-it-yourself kits to make the ecovative material at home.


The giy.ecovative.com link doesn't work anymore. Instead, try these links. Yes, but what if somebody comes at your house with a pizza oven and some pepperoni?

You Won[']t Believe What Super Glue Does in Borax

If you're going to try this yourself, make sure to do this in a well ventilated area. As you can see at 4:58 (and onward), the fume that come off of any large amount of super glue require a lot of ventilation.

That being said, I have absolutely no idea why you would want to recreate this experiment at home.

I can't personally come up with any way to turn the immediate, catalytic solidification of cyanoacrylate glue in borax into something useful for class.

Does anybody out there in the blogosphere have any ideas about how to turn this into something useful?

From DNA to Silly Putty, the diverse world of polymers - Jan Mattingly

I don't really appreciate the cartoon graphics of chemists adding one drop of a reactant (2:25 and 3:15) to an Erlenmeyer flask resulting in an instantaneous explosion.

But that's a pretty good summary of just about everything we teach in our polymer chapter. The video introduces monomers and polymers, natural and synthetic polymers, addition and condensation polymerization, some history of man-made polymers (bakelite, Silly Putty), drawbacks of synthetic polymer use.

Maybe this will be an end of the chapter review next year.

Tyvek round-up

I've been searching for a video showing the production of Tyvek, and I haven't had any luck. I've found a bunch of videos (not those shown below) that show the manufacturing of products made of Tyvek (disposable hazmat suits, festival bracelets, a whole bunch of wallets and tents and bivies), but I haven't found anything that will show me how the original 'fabric' is made.

Along the way of my searches, though, I came upon a number of interesting Tyvek videos...

From what I can tell, DuPont (Tyvek's manufacturer) seems most concerned about distinguishing their product from SMS (spunbond-meltblown-spunbond) and MPF (microporous film).



The further data on the DuPont website isn't terrifically detailed, admittedly, but I very much like the simple method they set up to test the permeability of the different materials.



The Professor Tytonius (?) video is hoaky, but the tests are the sorts of things my students could probably reproduce in the classroom to gauge the permeability of the various underlayments.



That's just gross. However, if I were doing work like they show at the end, I think a Tyvek suit would be appreciated.



Again, a straightforward test that my students would reproduce...




I appreciate that they do end by saying that Tyvek isn't really meant for paintballing.



Simple test...I like it...



So, Tyvek isn't bulletproof? Good to know...

Piezoelectricity round-up

Clearly piezoelectricity is way more common than I knew.

Sugar crystals? DNA? Bones? All are piezoelectric?

And if piezoelectric crystals lack a center of symmetry (2:20), how the heck is quartz piezoelectric? It looks awfully symmetrical to me.

Apparently, though, the quartz crystal is absolutely piezoelectric, as shown by Bill Hammack, the Engineer Guy...



Theoretically, it's possible to make and test your own piezoelectric crystal at home...(though sadly he uses a commercial piezoelectric crystal to make his guitar pickup)



As to how we can make use to piezoelectrcitiy...

• Top uses of piezoelectricity in everyday applications (inkjet printers, earbuds, tennis racquets, course-changing bullets, humidifiers, sonar, pressure sensors)
• Applications of piezoelectricity (from wikipedia)
• Piezoelectricity and its uses (even explaining how some tennis racquets use piezoelectrcity)

Summer camp map 2018

Have you ever had déjà vu?

Or maybe déjà map?

This year's map of the ASM material science summer camps is now available (just in time for the first camp to start in a week and a few days (not Memorial Day week but the week after that).

We progress, as we have the past few years, from red during the early summer through to purple in mid-August. There is one black pin because the dates of the Knoxville camp hadn't been finalized when the list I was working from was published.

If you have any questions about the camps - and I think the vast majority of folks who frequent this blog do so because they've attended a camp - ask 'em in the comments or to me via email (phschemguy at gmail.com).

If you happen to go through the maps from the past five years (linked above), you can also see how Google maps has changed the appearance of its pins. For a more detailed look at the changes, check out Justin O'Beirne's fascinating series of posts.