Playing with crystals

[Will Milne]

Charles Krebs once suggested that ascorbic acid was a "rite of passage" subject for those playing with polarization.

Thought I would give it a try - cross polarized oblique transmitted light/Nikon 10x 0.25 finite ( Edmunds) and nikon CPL 2.5x on an olympus BHA and Nikon D5100. Oblique lighting via the olympus apl/ach 1.4 condensor off axis feature. Be fun to try retarders/wave plates but the intermediate tube/holder for my scope seems impossible to find.





Will

[RogelioMoreno]

I like the effects on the second one.

Rogelio

[Pau]

Very nice!. I would like to know the detailed recipe to make this crystals.

Be fun to try retarders/wave plates but the intermediate tube/holder for my scope seems impossible to find.

The retarders can be also placed under the slide, in any position between the polarizer and the slide itself. In my school lab we make retarders with several adhesive tape layers over a blank microscope slide and place it over the polarizer who just lays over the light source in Oly CH clone microscopes.

[Will Milne]

Rogelio and Pau- glad you enjoyed the pics thanks.

Pau-I found that using boiled distilled water at a ratio by volume of between 5-10 times that of the ascorbic acid seemed to work. I tried a very saturated solution and that was less successful at generating interesting crystals. I put a couple of drops of the mixture on a 2x3" slide and smeared/evened it around with a coverslip , set the slide on a window sill and very quickly round crystals started to appear. I then put the slide in a cool spot and left it for a few hours and there was a whole landscape of crystals to explore.

Best source I found for small packages of interesting crystals to try was a home made wine store - they had ascorbic/malic/tartaric and citric acids in small packages at about $2-3 CDN each.

Thanks for the ideas on retarders I will try that.

Will

[Marek Mis]

Will,

Nice set of microcrystals. The second one is the best for me.
Pau is right if about placing retarders in your microscope. In my opinion using retarders is esential for obtaining interesting images. The retarders add additional colours to your images. You can also try to play with various pharmaceuticals which are often very nice under the microscope in polarized light (you can look at them on my webpage, in "ABSTRACT").
Playing with microcrystals is my favourite kind of microscopy

Marek

[Pau]

Will, thanks for the recipe