Prizm effect zinc in pgm chloride

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Slaughlin79

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Joined
Dec 25, 2017
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This is actually prettt cool! I’ve never came across anyone that’s talked about this so I’m not sure it’s common or not but I was actually surprised and wondering how the solution transformed this piece of zinc into a piece of prizm art work. Reminds me of granite . It looks pretty similar to when you etch a metal to see what it is made of like when forging steel.

I pulled a piece of zinc out of a cat leach solution that I had hung to precipitate the pgms and sprayed it off and was surprised to see it’s prizmed and actually quite beautiful but it’s got me thinking this maybe isn’t pure zinc bc of this prizm effect. Like I mentioned above you can do this by cutting a piece of steel in half and see why it’s made of ,or at least get an idea if it’s pure, by letting it sit in a etch solution. I’m sure y’all know more about it than me so I’ll just post a few pics.

Am I getting this because it’s not pure zincB5B48F48-A90F-4DC7-B536-F9E02BA2E91B.jpeg494747E5-8227-400E-BB77-C8AA2EE2DFB9.jpegCA03C116-5700-4B64-8AFC-C5072B1C65D9.jpeg765995FE-7CF8-43EA-B852-414D4FC6ABCB.jpeg maybe?
 
Zinc crystals, just as in etching a piece of steel, you highlight the different crystals that was formed from the molten zinc. The slower it solidifies the bigger the crystals. Etching a metal is usually easier from an edge than from a flat surface, the same effect is commonly seen in the microscopic world. A flat crystal surface is not as easy to etch as where the layers of atoms makes a step on the surface, so the single crystals tends to be etched flat along the crystal planes.

The science of crystals is called crystallography, I've only studied it briefly, just about five weeks full time at the university. :mrgreen:

Göran
 
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