[NewCandle] crystallization weight change transients

[Nick Reiter]

Hello all,

An update.

When last I reported in, I had run a couple of good
crystallizing runs with aluminum sulphate hydrate, a
moderately good crystallizer and near null as far as
heat evolution.  Results were null for weight change.

Keith suggested trying a test using Woods metal.  This
past week, I set that up, and ran a number of trials. 
I used about 50 grams of Woods metal in about 60ml of
water, to prevent the metal from wetting to the inside
glass surface of my beloved flask.  I heated metal and
water until the metal melted and water looked like it
was near boiling.  Sealed the flask, then put it on a
pillow of insulation on the balance pan.  My plan was
to watch the slow weight increase as the flask cooled
and the warm air convection force up the flask side
diminished.  Any sort of weight transient would be a
pip or dip in the curve.  Took it out to about 20
minutes beyond when I could plainly see the metal was
solid again (generally about a 4 to 5 minute phase
transition).  First run I swore I got a very slight
plateau in the weight profile right about
"solidifying" time.  but I could not reproduce it, and
if it was real, it was below what I would feel
comfortable in saying was significant.  So for
practical purposes of my set-up, no I saw no
indication.

I picked up a little cheapie thermos bottle that would
accomodate about a cup of volume.  I have been trying
to do a run with a large quantity of sodium
thiosulfate and use my 10 milligram digital balance to
look for a weight change in the sealed system.  So
far, luck has been poor... larger volumes of crystal
melt are less stable, and slower to crystallize.  Two
iffy runs so far with either null results or weight
decreases less than 10 milligrams for the mass used
(about 200 grams of the thiosulfate / hyposulphite).

So it's sort of led me into a doldrum and place of
pondering.  Can anything be weeded out of thermal
artifacts?  I'm thinking about it.

But all of this has renewed my passion in a way for
considering weight transients in general.  I revisited
some of my old experiments - such as shaking or
grinding materials and weighing them quickly.  One
that seems to give me some noticeable multi-milligram
weight loss-recovery oddity (and which was a favored
material from back in the 2002 era when I last played
with all this) was tellurium.  I have some chunk and
granular Te, which is quite brittle as crystalline
material goes.

I need to do more formal tests before I begin to
report on it, but I'm thinking that excitation
techniques that create less heating than crystal
growth might be better to confirm the existence of
bona fide anomalous weight transients.  I'll keep on
the crystal growing track for a little while yet, but
busting up (certain) crystals seems to do some spooky
stuff too.

If any of this turns out to be real, my inclination
would be to look toward some aspect of quantum
gravitation to model it.  I still have to wonder if
sometimes the handshake between gravitons and mass
particles can get fiddled with.

But those are carts before quantum horses:)

NR

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