Intricate and Mesmerizing Suppurations of Sodium Hydroxide at the Microscopic level
Good evening. I wish ya’ll peace and blessings.
Feeling a bit under the weather today, and that goes well with the theme. A few weeks back I had an amazing microscopy run; but every run, every family, every group has an outcast.
I tried flame-drying a solution of Sodium Hydroxide but instead of exotic crystals, it formed a scum. A grey debris field that wasn’t pleasant, but nor was it unloveable.
Today, I have for you, suppurations of Sodium Hydroxide.
Bubbles erupting out of the solution as all the water boiled off. The color looks as if it’s been grey-scaled. Look at the texture in between the bubbles. The tiny lines, barely noticeable, but present.Smaller but more plentiful. Random but symmetrical. Notice that none of the bubbles are popped, they all stopped growing midway.Shards forming. Thin, sharp, clear, brittle. The symmetry is mesmerizing if you look close enough. Here the molecules had at least a chance to crystallize, to form uniform, organized structures. A lovely picture.Very clear, sharp, and vivid. Few of my images are so in focus. Look at the bubbles, the big ones and the small ones. Look also at the grey backdrop, the texture of it, the folds and the creases, the tiny variations in color.This structure caught my eye. Look at the complexity, the granularity, the white divide near the middle. Look at the color scheme. It’s grey-and-white, but still so colorful.Expansive white line running through the black. Reminds me of a highway, or a river. Look closely into the white, at the half-formed shards, it’s as complex as it looks simple. Look at the black on either side, it’s dark and lovely. To the right, it ends into whitenesss, like a shore meeting the ocean.A bit of green here. Probably some impurities. The pale green gives it a mossy vibe, plant-like and fresh.More green. Notice the intricacies of the structure. It might just be a scum, but it’s not so simple or plain.Unfocused debris of Sodium Hydroxide. The crystals are square but ill-formed. The backdrop is white but littered with tiny dots and disfigurations.Again the scum, the suppurations, the grey bubbles.A clear and focused image. Look at the shapes of the crystals, they’re not as circular as the rest. Notice the background, the color, the textures.
Failed run? Sure.
Still beautiful? Definitely.
All images were viewed with a compound light microscope at 40x total magnification unless stated otherwise in the image description. Images were taken with a midrange phone camera, cropped, and adjusted.
