Via a respected reader and Gizmodo, a master scientific glassmaker doing his thing. (I gotta get me one of those torches.)
Friday, July 11, 2014
Enjoy some glassmaking
Via a respected reader and Gizmodo, a master scientific glassmaker doing his thing. (I gotta get me one of those torches.)
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When I was a freshman chem major I surprised my advisor by making a perfect spiral GC column on my third try (our campus wasn't busy enough to have a glassblower). I'd done a fair amount of work with glass while I was in middle school and high school so I wasn't afraid of a little fire.
ReplyDeleteA few weeks later I was visited by one of the P-chem professors who asked me to make a mercury vapor lamp for him. Off to the library I went to read about metal-to-quartz seals. Strangely enough, they weren't too concerned when I told them I needed a cylinder of hydrogen and some platinum salts.
My first oxygen-hydrogen flame was quite an experience. Holy smokes! It took me about eight weeks, but I finally got the thing finished. What a project! But we did some neat photochemistry on the cheap... You could have gotten a really fast tan from that lamp -- I rigged up a surplus motor-generator set for the power supply. IIRC, it drew about 5-10 kilowatts.