Some Stank De-Stankin' Crystals

The kids and I cracked open one of their Christmas gifts early, a crystal-growing kit. The first thing we noticed was the strong odor that came from the bag of materials, the easily-recognized smell of sulphur. Upon opening it up and reading the instructions, we learned that the smell came from our crystal-growing seed material, potassium aluminum sulfate. And it was supplied in a variety of colors for our crystal-farming enjoyment. Naturally, we had to make the blue crystals first.

Potassium aluminum sulfate, or potassium alum, or potash alum, is the stuff used in deodorant, water treatment, aftershave and other fun industrial applications. What's funny is that it stinks so badly, but ultimately is about the cleaning and de-stinking of the world.

These photos are all observing an area about 3mm across

After our crystals were grown, about a week-and-a-half, I tweezed a few samples of the small crystals out of our experiment cup and shot them using the crossed-polar light technique. This is where I use a polarized filter on my lens that is at a 90° angle to the polarized filter on my flash. You may recall, this technique filters light to reveal some pretty psychedelic rainbow effects.

These photos were shot from above the crystals as they sat on a stretched piece of plastic wrap, suspended above the inside of a box backed with black construction paper; the flash was under the subject on one side, providing light from beneath the crystals. The use of transmissive light is one of the methods used by Ken Libbrecht to shoot snowflakes. As for why the black paper looks red in the photos, I can't account for that. Without more experimenting, I can't be sure if it looks like that because of the use of polarized filters, the plastic wrap, the dye used in the black paper (a reddish black dye vs a greenish black?), or a combination of these factors.

The color in these photos comes from several sources: The crystals were infused with some sort of blue/purple food coloring, and you can see some blobs of the coloring encased inside these crystals. Also, the cross-polarized light creates little flecks of rainbow colors inside these tiny prisms. Every mineral will bend cross-polarized light in a different way, and geologists, chemists, and other scientists use this technique to observe the presence and characteristics of different minerals and compounds in their study.

And yes, you can see the obvious dust on my sensor in these pics. Sorry about my dirty camera.

The girls and I are currently growing sugar crystals, so we can eat our experiment afterward. I'll be sure to shoot them, but if you're impatient and want to see sugar up close now, take a look at some of my past posts.

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Along the Edges

I have several photos of the edges of things from some recent shoots. Above is the edge of a piece of a mirror; the glass is about 2 or 3mm thick. And though the sharp edges of glass may look straight, they are often full of nicks and dings and chipped surfaces.

The next photo is the edge of an aerogel. This very fragile material is one of the worlds best insulators (it's about 97% air) and is also the least dense substance on earth. It's created in laboratories and used by NASA for insulating spacecraft, among other more earth-based uses.

This sample of aerogel was contributed kindly by a fan of Morning Macro. Thank you, Matt!

See if you can guess from the next two photos what they are before reading further.

The two photos above are different edges on a typical disposable plastic tape dispenser. The first is the cutting edge for the tape, and the second is an edge of the curved body of the dispenser, with a printed insert inside.

The last two photos that follow are more from the crossed polars shoots. These are the cut edges of bubble wrap, and you can see the wall thickness of the "bubbles" clearly in these shots. Remember, the colors in these photos were present in the actual subjects, and were the fascinating result of using two polarized films in opposing alignment, not because it was lit with colored lights. Only white light was used in the capture of these photos.

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Assorted Stuff: Penny with Salt, 17 Pages, and Serrated

Here are some early pictures from my new lens, a Canon MP-E 65mm dedicated macro lens. So, how's it perform? I'm still getting used to it and changing around the way I use light in order to accommodate it, but I have a few photos I'm happy with already.

Above is an almost microscopic photo of a penny on which I had sprinkled salt. The magnification is somewhere between 8-10x life size (in my camera, making it much greater magnification here on your computer screen).

Below are 17 pages of a book, viewed on end. It was regular paper, not extra thick or anything... this new lens just allows me to get that close a photo. I'm a bit amazed.

Below the paper photo is a serrated edge of a knife, about one full serration (if that's a word). It was clean, so I'm guessing that those little crystals are simply some bit of soap or dishwasher solution that may have dried on the blade, crystallizing in the process.

Send me your ideas for tiny things to make big!

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Peach Fuzz, and the Knife to Slice it

That's pretty much all I got to say about that. You've got some of your basic peach fuzz up there (V says, "I wike da futhz"), and your basic sharpened chef's knife edge below. If you look close enough, the little fuzz strands are clear.

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