AlphaPhoenix - 2021-02-19
A DIY Recipe for Giant Hexagonal Ice Crystals Episode 3-and-a-half (the final episode) of my series on water ice! In this video I discuss the vapor grown ice crystals with a bit more science, and a lot more timelapses! It's amazing what you can learn aout a physical process when you can photograph it continuously for weeks… Other videos in this series: The Sound of Freezing, Explained! https://youtu.be/Wd_c0A8u3lw The Sound of Freezing (Bonus Footage) https://youtu.be/hpzutKRSukw What is polycrystalline water? https://youtu.be/g7ONBuVtz-w A DIY Recipe for Giant Hexagonal Ice Crystals https://youtu.be/L0SYxpVab6M Big Hexagons of Ice 2: Thermoelectric Boogaloo https://youtu.be/VA710QYxEu0 Growing Giant Snowflakes (Timelapse Supercut) https://youtu.be/MqIvuWsd5OI Check out the other social media for updates and ramblings: https://twitter.com/Alpha__Phoenix https://www.reddit.com/r/TryItAgain/ Interesting articles for the extra-curious: J.M. Adams, W. Lewis, The Production of Large Single Crystals of Ice, Rev. Sci. Instrum. 5 (1934) 400–402. doi:10.1063/1.1751759. T. Shichiri, Faceted ice crystals grown in water without air, J. Cryst. Growth. 187 (1998) 133–137. doi:10.1016/S0022-0248(97)00839-7. P. Bisson, H. Groenzin, I.L. Barnett, M.J. Shultz, High yield, single crystal ice via the Bridgman method, Rev. Sci. Instrum. 87 (2016) 034103. doi:10.1063/1.4944481. A. Cahoon, M. Maruyama, J.S. Wettlaufer, Growth-Melt Asymmetry in Crystals and Twelve-Sided Snowflakes, Phys. Rev. Lett. 96 (2006) 255502. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.255502. T. Gonda, The Growth of Small Ice Crystals in Gases of High and Low Pressures, C, J. Meteorol. Soc. Japan. Ser. II. 55 (1977) 142–146. doi:10.2151/jmsj1965.55.1_142. Y. Furukawa, S. Kohata, Temperature dependence of the growth form of negative crystal in an ice single crystal and evaporation kinetics for its surfaces, J. Cryst. Growth. 129 (1993) 571–581. doi:10.1016/0022-0248(93)90493-G. N.N. Khusnatdinov, V.F. Petrenko, Fast-growth technique for ice single crystals, J. Cryst. Growth. 163 (1996) 420–425. doi:10.1016/0022-0248(95)00980-9. D. v. d. S. Roos, Rapid Production of Single Crystals of Ice, J. Glaciol. 14 (1975) 325–328. doi:10.3189/s0022143000021808. #Materials #Physics #Crystals Music and images in this video: I Dunno by grapes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) http://ccmixter.org/files/grapes/16626 Arcadia - Wonders by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100326 Artist: http://incompetech.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowflake#/media/File:Snowflake_macro_photography_1.jpg
Now I'm imagining some alien hobbyist in a Type II civilization, millions of lightyears away, furiously trying to grow perfectly hexagonal basalt crystals. Or, better yet, some alien hobbyist in a Type III civilization, billions of lightyears away, furiously trying to get the polar clouds of a gas giant to form a perfect hexagon. Ya know what they say about hexagons...
They're the bestagons!
They’re hexagonal
Ah, a fellow Kurzgesagt viewer!
Wait aren't the polar clouds on Saturn already hexagonal?
Couldn't WE make basalt crystals?
"most snowflakes are infact not manually grown in vacuum chambers in the clouds"
MOST, what arent you telling us?
Muahaha
He's the one that makes the snow that we see :o
"Space snow" xD
DON'T QUESTION IT!!!!!!! * They'll hear you *
Use a chest freezer (no defrost), and add an external thermostatic control that switches its AC line.
Technology connections gang
@@I-Am-L yep XD
Yup. Cheapo Chinese PID controller and a solid state relay.
There are no-hackery-required temp controllers out there already. Inkbird is a popular brand and run 30-40 USD. The are commonly used to make kegerators and there are two outlet versions so you can also control a heater at the same time.
Input your desired temp range and it will control the power to the device directly. I've used them to both make a chest freezer into a refrigerator and to keep one running colder than it normally would.
As always I love the videos!
Good tip!
The only channel that could get me to watch ice form for ~30 mins... Great video!
also easily one of the most underrated channels on YT
I REALLY wish i knew how to be rated then...
Real experimental perseverance Brian. Your videos are all excellent.
Thanks! I still want to return to this project with better temp control…
Its crazy this is a series I've never watched before but the youtube algorithm was absolutely correct I've really enjoyed this.
I've often thought that growing my own crystals would be a fun project some day. Your series of videos has profoundly changed my mind. 😁
I got sucked into this channel from Steve Mould's shoutout. The payoff was well worth the wait.
the much needed sequel
thanks!
if you are reading this, buy a variable frequency drive / or build one and hook it to the micro-controller such as Arduino /esp32 to control those freezer compressor speed for adjusting the temperature response smoothly.
I was playing Kerbal Space Program while watching this and got really confused when Arcadia by Kevin McLeod started playing at 9:47.
Same! Was hearing two kerbal instrumentals playing at the same time.
Why are you depriving us of the pleasure of seeing these crystals in polarized light?
With your dedication, you deserve way more subscribers. It's quite inspiring tbh.
Btw I also broke a freezer in just the same, very dumb way. Wasn't for such a cool project though, I just thought I would be able to get around defrosting it properly... well but in the end, it defrosted anyways :/
To get a stable temperature, maybe use a heated metal block to work against the freezer - us a PID controller to control the heater, avoiding any need to modify the freezer.
Homebrewers use a chest freezer to make a controlled temperature environment (use a cheap one without a defrost cycle). You could take the top off and put a clear cover (or an insulated cover with a clear port). Use a pdi controller and include many large blocks of ice to provide a thermal ballast. One of the troubles with your freezer is that it was practically empty.
your channel is incredibly underrated. i legit feel like how i felt when i saw destins earlier videos. or integza. bruh this is too legit
I wonder how would ice crystals on surfaces of comets would look
ooooh interesting question!
Or what about the ice formed on the moon's poles? I imagine the ice on Europa and Enceladus is in more forms than the common Earth variety.
Wouldn't the ice just sublimate away?
@@max_kl The ice only sublimates if it's exposed iirc. After the comet passes close to the sun I imagine it would sublimate and produce some crystals though.
@@chnhakk yeah, maybe
This was really interesting, learning is so much fun. I'm glad you were happy with the final crystal and you learned a lot. Thanks for sharing this with us. 😊
You're doing amazing work by sharing all of this. Looking forward to your future endeavors.
When I was a kid growing up in Alaska, there were different types of snow crystals that you could find. For example, when there was several feet of snow on the ground, and the outside air temperature was somewhere around -40, if you dug down to the ground level, you would find crystals that could be a quarter inch in size. Mostly I remember hexagonal needles and you could feel the hexagonal 'stem' through your gloves. Another great place to find big ice crystals was near a sink-hole. The decaying plant matter inside the sink hole would create an updraft of warmer air along the edges. The crystals would grow out from the edge of the snow at the top of the hole. Some crystals could be an inch in length and were often flattened needles an inch in length.
One of your mistakes Is the freezer being empty. They are not designed to run constantly without burning the pump out. To maintain a temperature more reliably fill any gaps of dead air with ice or other frozen things. Otherwise every time you open the door your starting over form scratch. Even if its just a old milk jug filled with water it will act as a cold battery to keep things from getting hot when the freezer pump needs to rest.
I actually enjoyed this 'BTS' version more than the main presentation, getting to see your process evolve as you conquered previous results. I wouldn't call them outright failures, but that is the cyclic nature of discovering a process.
I've been working with graphene the last few years after a stint with jet engines and became fascinated with single crystal metallic structures for a time. Throughout that journey, I researched a number of like processes that people have built upon, though the guy that really went for it in his field was Kenneth G. Libbrecht, the 'designer snowflake guy'. While this is about as far as polar opposites as you can get in end result, I learned a lot from him in things I'd like to adapt to future graphenic structures when I get to theory testing time, hopefully in the next year or so.
the KSP space music hits hard
I absolutely love your subtitle on this video. I died and was reborn a physics student.
We won't leave it as it is! One big hexagon is needed!
This channel started to have great my ranking/subscriber rate with crazy crystal chemistry, astro photography, university lab videos.
Right after I watched the last one you post a new one
Speedy
You gave me a mild case of PTSD. 35 years ago I took a grad class on phase transformations in metals and alloys It was four months of studying phase diagrams and theorizing why they look like they do. Until this video, I don't think I thought about a phase diagram since then. We rarely consult those in IT.
If I was to attempt this experiment, I would probably start around building a cold plate freezer with a 3 phase compressor and controlling that compressor with a VFD. The cold plate would attach to the bottom of the vacuum chamber, and inside the chamber have a copper pedestal that sits above the waterline. Use resistive heaters to keep the water in the chamber barely in the liquid state.
If the chamber was taller, it could be possible to keep sufficient distance between the heated window and the experiment to minimize it's influence on the experiment. Then just put the entire apparatus in a sealed and insulated box and monitor it from the camera/sensor feeds. This would allow one to "tune" the crystal growth operation with minimal disruption.
Totally fascinating!! I know you probably don't want to do this experiment again so soon. But this would of been neat to of seen how these might have looked if you used some sort of coloring agent that can transport with water vapor if able to. Seeing more of the shapes with a magenta dye/pigment could be super neat. Or if it can't be vaporized then maybe dripping in some dye every once in a while. It might of shown some more of the details of the crystals besides the light reflecting off from it. Maybe hopeful wishing at least! Thank you for a fabulously enjoyable video!!!
I think a series just on growing crystals with different compounds would be cool. There are quite a few things that can form crystals, and I know that colorful compounds like copper sulfate and bismuth metal look good as crystals. You could take that time to also explain how the structure of a molecule can make different crystal patterns, like how some chemicals form long, needle-like crystals when crystalized out of solution. Maybe you've already covered this in some form, but it's a cool idea.
"I'm pulling it out it's been 6 months"
"man i wish I would've left it in there for another week!"
lmao
This is amazing and it is beautiful!
I really enjoy the use of the Destiny music, took my back to some fun times.
You can get PID temperature controllers, plug out up to a relay to contol power to your chest freezer. The ones coming from China are really well priced (i used one on my oven to replace it's faulty capillary thermostat and it's FANTASTIC). It can cycle power just nice to match the heat loss so that the temperature is maintained very very well.
I feel like there has to be a really complicated machine which can regulate the amount of a substance in it's gas phase and keep the temperature/pressure constant so that it can easily deposit on a substrate. Hmmm if only we knew where to find one... cough molecular beam epitaxy cough . I realize this wouldn't work for what you are trying to do but I thought it was funny that the MBE is literally the machine for controlled crystalline growth. Seriously great videos, love the subjects you are covering and I can't wait to see more
One would think 😂
@@AlphaPhoenixChannel Expensive idea, but just putting it out there. Maybe if the vacuum chamber was re-designed to more actively control both heat and pressure? Improvise a way to extract heat from the vacuum chamber directly, rather than just putting it in a freezer. A pot with heat sinks or another type of cooling system. And better sensors and controls on the pressure control. Build a microcontroller to monitor all that, perhaps integrate a camera system into it.
And make a room with more precise climate control to do this in, or even a commercial walk in freezer, which would be useful for other experiments as well. Or a smaller custom scientific freezer for this sort of thing.
There could be a world of new stuff in water crystals like this we don't even know about, until we try.
I know you are burned out on the project, but don't abandon it entirely. This is interesting.
Yay! This is what I originally came here for! really really cool. I hope we get to see a second attempt with a better set up in the future c:
not that this is the only thing i'd wanna see from this channel though, all the other videos are great too
I wonder how regular ice would compare in density, weight, and strength to a single crystal that grew to enormous size?
@AlphaPhoenix You need a non- frost free deep freezer. One of the cheap ones. They do not have a defrost section of the control loop. They just turn on when it gets too warm inside. That's why you have to chip the ice off everything after a while when using one to store food long term. The benefit is that the food never has to get warm enough to melt the ice growing on the surfaces of its packaging. That's how the 'frost free' freezers work, they let it warm up enough to melt the frost.
11:15 Yeah I had expected that you would keep that vacuum pump going for this reason. I expect the pressure to increase a lot from when you pumped it initially
The thermostat of our freezer broke, fortunately in the "on" position. Replaced it with a thermostat module, was pretty easy and works great. I think it could be useful for this as you could control the temperature of the Water or other parts of the experiment instead of just the inside air temperature.
3:55 I know you probably won't read this, but there's a guy making a minecraft-like game based on a hexagonal grid (and it's on a sphere instead of a plane). The game is called PlanetSmith and the creator posts progress updates on youtube under the name Incandescent Games
Would supercooling distilled water to allow you to control the nucleation sites work? If I understand correctly, polycrystalline ice is formed due to there being many nucleation sites and monocrystalline ice is formed when there is only one, but there may be something that I'm missing here
Maybe you could update the part 1 video description with a link to this one? :)
You should post a bunch of youtube shorts about the ice forming and other visually cool stuff. Apparently they are the new hotness in the platform. Maybe that can get you a bunch more subs, because your content is pretty amazing already, so... Keep the work!
I’m planning to - I also have a lot of timelapses that would do real well as shorts cause they loop. I’m currently struggling with weather I release them here or on an “AlphaPhoenixShorts” channel. I don’t want to pollute this channel with lots of reused content, but I also want to bring people to THIS channel where I’ve already put in years of effort...
@@AlphaPhoenixChannel yes i understand the hassle. Youtube shorts is not a very mature idea now... I would say use this channel, i don't mind seeing one more 30 secs video in my recommendations and even if reused, that kind of stuff is pretty cool, so i would watch it again. Maybe make a community poll (😏😏) asking people if they would mind. You have potential, i want to see you grow big to enjoy even more high quality videos. Good luck!
Reminds me of the pillars in Giant's Causeway structures.
you ever try growing giant cubic salt crystals? I've tried to at home and had very limited success. I think I've run into similar basic issues. I need to take longer and control conditions more closely. it's amazing the step in complexity from forming small, visible crystals to forming big, hold in your hand crystals
@glytchmeister9856 - 2022-08-25
“Would i be thrilled to answer emails as long as I don’t have to do it? YES”
dude, that’s EXTREMELY relatable for some reason