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Geek romance: How to make a Storm Glass pendant

sciencepunk — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 20:23:30 +0000

Geek romance: How to make a Storm Glass pendant

Toward the end of last year, being in possession of two novelties - a girlfriend and a steady job - I decided to spend my free evenings crafting a very special piece of jewellery. I was inspired by a visit to Barometer World in the late summer, where I discovered the curious material known as storm glass (tragic backstory recounted here).

In short, a storm glass is a weather divination tool so old that nobody really knows where they came from. It's likely they were borne out of alchemy experiments performed during the medieval period. Inside a sealed glass tube, crystals bloom, wither and vanish spontaneously, apparently spurred on by weather fronts. It was a thing of wondrous beauty.

Nobody knows what exactly makes storm glasses act this way. I've read in many places since that it is pressure changes, as with a barometer. This clearly isn't true, as the fluid is sealed inside a solid glass chamber. Others cite temperature fluctuations - far more probable - or, more exotically, electrical discharge across the glass (again, unlikely, glass is a very fine electrical insulator). Even spooky quantum forces get a mention.

It was around then that an idea hatched in my head: if it was really heat that caused a storm glass to sigh and sway from one condition to another, then why couldn't it be turned into a pendant? One that would react to the body heat of the wearer? I would make a storm glass - not one that predicted the passing of nature's cold fronts, but one that signalled the tempests of the heart! A crystal that would melt in the heat of my girlfriend's passions, and grow hard in the cooling of her mood. It would be easy, right?

The recipe for storm glass can be found almost anywhere, although a slightly different version exists for warmer climes, hinting at where I would need to go. It contains only five chemicals: water, ethanol, camphor, potassium nitrate and ammonium chloride. Without access to a lab, some of the chemicals can be quite tricky to get. Don't believe anyone who tells you that chemists will stock these. If you want to find a pharmacist that will sell you potassium nitrate, you'll have to go to one in the 1960s. Probably because pretty much every one of the ingredients can be used in a bomb. Thankfully, capitalism and the internet conspire, and you can find all the ingredients in discrete quantities on Amazon.

I'm not going to get into the practicalities of making genuine storm glass, as there are several good videos on YouTube that you can follow. But here's where the normal storm glass, and a romantic storm glass pendant differ.

Camphor is quite soluble in alcohol, but not at all in water. Similarly, potassium nitrate and ammonium chloride dissolve far better in water than alcohol. So the whole lot is like three fat men struggling to perch on a single bar stool. It's this inherent instability that makes the storm glass sensitive to small fluctuations in the environment.

The solution produces two different crystals: cloudy snowy ones that are the camphor. They are big and fluffy and suspend in solution quite well. The other solids crystalise into far more beautiful, spiky or feathery frost-like crystals. These, however, do not suspend in solution, and sink to the bottom. A badly-made storm glass separates out:

The traditional recipe is unsuitable for a storm glass pendant for two reasons: One, it is primed for an outdoor barometer, so functions at 10 to 15 degrees C. My storm glass of the heart will sit next to my girl's skin, and be a lot warmer. Wearing normal storm glass at this temperature renders it clear, so firstly you need to increase the concentration of the ammonium chloride and potassium nitrate. Basically, warm up your water to skin temperature, and keep adding those chemicals until the solution is saturated. Add the saturated solution to your camphor-alcohol mix. Personally, I think the amount of camphor in the traditional recipe is grossly over-stated (most of my early glasses came out over-fogged), so there's no need to add more - in fact, you may need to add a little (A LITTLE) alcohol to your storm glass to clear out the stubborn camphor crystals. In short, it's a lot of tweaking, sealing, wearing, testing, retweaking... and so forth.

Put the mixture in a small vial - I bought mine here. Small vials help keep the crystals suspended, but even so, this one, like many, many others, was rejected:

Eventually, you'll have a glass that is almost clear when warm, and produces beautiful crystals. I've seen snowflakes, clusters, clouds, fog, frost, and delicate crystal ferns grow inside my storm glass. It's run the entire gamut from clear to pearlescent to quartz. And best of all, it seems to work whilst hanging around the neck of my belle. Unfortunately, it's very tricky to photograph, especially after you give it away, but here's a try:

If you pull this off, expect brownie points aplenty from any self-respecting nerd girl, and give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back!

Now, before the inevitable requests: yes, I still have lots of storm glass fluid left over. And yes, I have several empty vials. But no, I will not make you a storm glass. I will not sell you one. Sadly, I can not even give any storm glass pendants away, or trade them for other curios, as I planned. My #1 nerd has forbidden it. She won't play dice with the idea of another woman walking around with my signature gift hanging from her neck. Proving once again that although I might know a lot about science, I have much to learn about a woman's heart.

Best of luck, chemistry lovers, you're on your own from here.

sciencepunk Sun, 01/15/2012 - 15:23

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You may want to change "beau" to "belle" in the 3rd last para if you don't want said nerd girl to box your ears ;)

I was so ready to call you out, but then I discovered you're totally right! How many decades have I been misusing that, I wonder...

Would your belle mind if you posted a more exact final recipe of proportions for your suspension?

Hi CuteDedGrl

The final proportions aren't set exactly, it's more of a process of discovery. It goes a bit like this:

1) Make up a storm glass as per this video, treat it as your base mixture, and take samples from it to experiment with.
2) Put a little fluid in a vial and wear it. If it's full of cloudy crystals all the time, add some ethanol to your working sample and refill the vial. If it's clear all the time, add more camphor.
3) If there are no sharp crystals, add some more ammonium/potassium to your sample and refil the vial. If there are grains collecting at the bottom, add more water.

Remember to warm up your samples when you're fine tuning them. As I recall, added quite a bit more alcohol, and increased the ammonium/potassium content until the solution was saturated.

"This clearly isn't true, as the fluid is sealed inside a solid glass chamber."

Unless extremely rigid, the solid glass container will deform and you'll get pressure. The better way to test that is to squeeze the tube in a grip and see if it changes.

Hi, thanks for the great idea here:)
I'm a bit scientifically inept, and I've tired several dozen times to get the mix right but I always get soemthing too cloudy or that doesn't mix.
Is there any other advice you can give to help please?

@6 Rah - The camphor is very difficult to dissolve in ethanol; you will need to warm it up (careful! it's flammable! use a water bath / non-flame heater) and keep stirring for 15-30 minutes. It will eventually go almost clear.

As soon as you add the camphor and alcohol mixture to the water and potassium/ammonium mix, it will go cloudy again. Warm it up again and add small amounts of ethanol until it clears. For a test tube filled the typical storm glass fluid, I found 10 mls of ethanol should make it go clear.

@5 Wow - I'm confident that any deformation in a glass container will be negligible compared to pressure changes resulting from temperature change; though if I had the tools I'd definitely try to calibrate a storm glass!

I think it's more likely temperature changes, since a sealed "Galileo Thermometer" is also in a sealed glass container and does something similar (in that case the floats either float or sink depending on the temperature, IIRC because the density of the water is a maximum at 4 degrees C and varies from there).

But this does sound like a very cool project.

That said, glass does deform with temperature as well, just a bit. I live in a cold climate (New York) and if it is sufficiently cold out -- say, 10 to 20 degrees F outside(-12 to -6 C) -- windows will sometimes crack if your apartment is warm, or if a candle or lamp is too close to the glass. Touching a single-paned window you can really feel the difference -- glass transmits heat pretty well.

Wonderful !I'd like to try it !

my chemistry teacher said that if i can get more exact measurements, she will give me ingredients to make this... is there any way i can more exact measurements? the closest possible? please?

The Information Diet - five ways to improve your data consumption [SciencePunk]

sb admin — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 17:35:56 +0000

The Information Diet - five ways to improve your data consumption [SciencePunk]

Last week I had a visit from a friend of mine, who was on something of a farewell tour. After several years of planning, he'd packed in his dependable but much-begrudged corporate job, and was setting sail for Asia, to see more of the world. He's already seen much more of the world than most people. Not because he was well connected or rich, but because he made it his life's mission to tour the forgotten, the hidden and the forbidden places of the world. I mention this because if there ever was a man to take life advice from, it is this one, and he put into words something I've been pondering for a while now.

"It's called," he told me, over the noise of the pub, "an information diet." It seems like an odd concept, even a heretical one. I am by my own admission an information glutton. I suck up huge volumes of information like a baleen whale, sieve it, swallow it, gulp again. I have a cascade of feeds I never have time to read, and I'm getting serious indigestion. Seeing and sharing is easy in an always-online world, and addictive to boot. I'm not the first one to turn a critical eye on my sources of information - the phrase "information diet" was coined long ago; prior to the internet there was no shortage of voices railing against the popular medium as an unfit and corrupting influence, whether it be comics, video games, television, MTV, books, and, we must presume, scrolls and slates in some early day.

This is what your RSS feed looks like

In fact, the information diet is such a popular idea, there's a book out next year on the subject, called, er, The Information Diet. Lifehacker have run a piece on the concept too. Now don't get me wrong, I attach no moral value to the idea of an information diet. I don't care if you follow one or not. If you want to guzzle, guzzle. But personally, I've become aware that a great deal of the information I consume is useless garbage, and time-consuming garbage at that, and I want to find a more streamlined and enjoyable way to consume media.

Thing is, at the moment, nobody is really getting into the nitty-gritty of an information diet. What does it look like in practice? So I thought I'd open the floor and throw some ideas about. Here are some of the things I've done in an effort to improve my information diet.

#5 Diversify your menu
Probably the most obvious option, and it stems directly from five important words: Turn Off That Damn Computer. I'm trying to repurpose my computer as a tool for finding the information I want, rather than being the plate it's served on. I'm trying to make time for cinema (for the whole experience of cinema - finding a friend, setting a date, choosing a film, buying overpriced candy...), for theatre, for pub chats, for radio, for half-remembered tales over coffee, for walking tours, for wandering the neighbourhood, for fiction, for newspapers, comics, crosswords; for paper. There are stories everywhere, I tell myself, and most of them are better for the amount of effort you need to put in to hear them.

#4 Find a better solution to boredom
Now that I'm commuting again, I've realised how even a short journey on a bus inspires the kind of preparation that would make polar explorers blush. Only it's not the weather I'm protecting myself against, but the prospect of boredom. Sometimes I'd only be happy boarding once armoured with a newspaper, book, work notes, smartphone and iPod. First I tried rationing myself to one "entertainment" medium per trip, since then I've taken a notebook and used the time to write down ideas for stories and projects; and to simply take in my surroundings rather than isolate myself from them. Hippie-shit I know, but at the end of it I have a notebook with cool ideas in it, and a quieter mind.

#3 Damn the social network
I've never made a secret of that fact I hate Facebook with a passion. It tries to be an email system, a photo sharing site, a chat site, and many other things, and it does all of them pretty badly. However, it's also the only way I'll remain in contact with certain far flung people, so for now I am stuck with it.

I've tried to quarantine myself from its lures, and have turned off all email updates. I never use the chat option. I do not make albums. My privacy values are at their highest setting, a tall fence to ward off unwelcome visitors. Instead of communicating through status updates, I'm trying to call people, arrange to meet people. It's bloody obvious, but social networks are a suppressant for the appetite of social interaction, not a meal.

Getting rid of Twitter is a dicier option. For its distraction and time consumption, it's also a powerful tool. I could live without it, but I'd be worse off, all in all. For now I've turned off all email updates; and Twitter themselves have already poured turpentine over that candy-coated crack that was the retweeted_of_mine button, so praise be to social networks who make their services harder to use.

#2 Decentralise your media consumption
This is a bit of a heretical idea too - technology is geared towards central entertainment systems for our homes. But you know what? They are hateful, terrible devices. Ten years ago, if I'd wanted to listen to music, my flow chart would have looked like this:

SWITCH ON STEREO > INSERT CD > PRESS PLAY

Now it looks something like this

SWITCH ON PC > WAIT TO BOOT > LOG IN > MORE BOOTING > UPDATES START ROLLING > CLICK ON ITUNES > WAIT SEVERAL MINUTES WHILE IT BOOTS > GET BORED, OPEN EMAIL/BROWSER > ITUNES UPDATE REQUIRED > START DOWNLOAD > START CLICKING ON FEEDS > ITUNES UPDATE DOWNLOADED > INSTALLING > RESTARTING ITUNES, MORE WAITING > ITUNES OPEN > ! WINDOWS UPDATE FINISHED, MANDATORY REBOOT...

Ad nauseum. And ultimately, I end up sat in front of my computer for an hour dicking about, when all I wanted was to play some music. I'm distractible, I know, but it's a trait that won't change. So, to that end, I have purchased a very unfashionable clock radio. It plays music, from the airwaves! It also has an iPod dock so I can listen to my own music. That's all it does. One button, instant music. I haven't quite built up the courage to downgrade from a smart phone to a regular one, because I get lost too much and I like having Google Maps in my pocket, but I'm warming to the idea.

#1 Burn your TV
There is no greater advice I could give to any person to improve their life, than to get rid of their TV. It's not that I despise TV programs (we can all agree that the majority is utter shite, but there are gems). It's that television watching is an open-ended activity that automatically expands to fill all the time you allow it, and usually more. Programs are intentionally constructed to quickly draw you in and keep you watching; they demand your attention and give you little for it. If you stop watching TV, you'll soon find you have time for all those things you never get a chance to do. Boredom is a great motivator. I have a simple check that pretty much destroyed my ability to sit and watch TV: I ask myself "If you saw this in the TV schedule, would you have made a point to watch it?". It's not enough for TV to be enjoyable. You need to make that conscious cost-benefit analysis: is it worth your time? This mantra is a great immunity from that time-eating rogue. Now I find it very difficult to watch TV, even when I own one. I like the police chase shows: you can switch on half way through while you eat dinner, understand perfectly what's going on, and switch off when you're done eating, because you already know how it ends. Perfect disposable TV.

FIN

So there it is, a long ranty stream-of-consciousness on improving your digital menu. Which you've just sat and read on your computer. Ho ho. I hope it was worth it, that SciencePunk was a nutritious amuse-bouche for your daily dining. Leave a comment, then go outside and play.

sb admin Sun, 11/20/2011 - 12:35

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