April 30, 2009

seizure: the copper sulphate crystal flat. Silvery shards of cold light spangle and wink and beckon. Every surface is furred and infested; big blue crystals dangle like cubist bats from the light fittings. Little wonder the flat has been abandoned: you’d move out, too, if the crystals moved in.
posted by the quidnunc kid 15 years ago
  • Begone, ugly giant bags of mostly water.
  • Don't talk to my parents like that, you ingrate.
  • !
  • Gorgeous, if impractical. Wonder if it smells like blood.
  • oooh, 'tis shiiiny. Is it wrong that I now really want to grow myself a chandelier of those?
  • Copper Sulfate is quit poisonous. Enough to make the room a deadly safe retreat during a pandemic. Not that there's really going to a NEED for that, hopefully. It is enough that the effect is so beautiful, in an alien sort of way.
  • <curmudgeon>Dagnabbit, you uppity crystals, get off my walls or I'll call the cops on you!!</curmudgeon> I wonder whether it's any concern that the stuff is somewhat toxic and bad if it gets out into the environment (say when they tear the installation down).
  • Well that was a near coincidence
  • Here's a Steam Punk Workshop article that shows how to transform copper sulfate. In this case they use the solution to copperplate an altoid tin. They go on to artistically etch the tin with electrolyzed salt water. Small scale, but it does suggest one way to use up the old crysals, once they're dissolved back off the walls. Ferric sulfate is a byproduct of this process however, and another disposal issue :)
  • Hmm. The logo comes up, which fooled me, but where's the damn article? I copied the URL correctly. Google must have gotten me in the back way, somehow. Well, it WAS a beautiful thing to see, and might be worth logging in or searching for. Sorry for inconvenience.