It has been a while and I don't think it was cube crystals, but if anyone wants to see shiny crystals kind of form in real time you can heat up some Gallium (it's online and cheaper than you'd think). Then just fish around in the liquid and sometimes you find a crystal formation in there. It's pretty cool, you can influence the way it forms as it cools down.
This made me think of it since it was really cool. I'm about the head to work but will see if I can find my Gallium when I get home.
Hi everyone, I'm a geologist and I'd like to take the time to explain the "There are no straight lines in nature" line and why it's so goddamn stupid that it made me angry enough to post here. For the sake of my sanity and for brevity, I'm going to explain things a little hastily and simply. Any questions or nitpicks please feel free to add, I'm sure I messed up somewhere. A chemist would be better at explaining this at the atomic level.
In basic chemistry we learned that atoms bond together in many different ways. If we really think about it, it would be really easy to make a perfectly straight line by constantly chaining atoms together. This is how many things in our world forms, including minerals.
Pyrite for example is just iron - sulfur - iron - sulfur and it will keep doing this until the area is out of iron and/or sulfur.
Now, this is a single chain. Why stop there? Why not make more chains? Nothing is stopping us so...
Fe - S - Fe - S
Fe - S - Fe - S
Fe - S - Fe - S
But wait, there is a problem. We have iron atoms too close to one another and the same with sulfur. Those atoms don't want to share electrons with themselves. It's like having two positive pole magnets trying to touch, just won't work... but what if we shift every other line a single atom?..
Fe - S - Fe - S
S - Fe - S - Fe
Fe - S - Fe - S
Now we have every iron atom surrounded by sulfur and every sulfur atom snuggly surrounded by iron. Now, I could go into why this is prefered but for simplicity just think of it as have north and south pole magnets (I know it's different but it's still a good analogy). negative only wants to be surrounded by positive and positive only by negative.
We can extrapolate this to the third dimension and have each iron atom surrounded by 6 sulfur atoms (1 coming out of the screen, 1 going into the screen along that axis), each 90 degrees apart from each other. This leads to [gasp] perfect lines running through the newly-formed crystal. Not just lines of atoms but also diagonal lines of same atoms. If you want a model representation just take red and blue 1x1 legos and surround them just like described above but in 3d space. Not all minerals form cubes but many form hexagons (sapphires/rubies, same thing just different color), and even cooler shapes like dodecahedrons (garnets, 12-sided dice) and yes they have perfectly straight lines sometimes even straighter than we can make. There is a gay joke in there somewhere. please pm me your joke
Below is a useful site for checking out crystal structures of various minerals. You will learn very quickly that all crystals are formed by straight lines of various angles. Note the neato 3d model that you can spin and check out. I linked to Pyrite but check out Garnets, Topaz, Siderite, Diamond and Graphite, Calcite, etc by using the search function in the upper right.
Charmle_H on June 4th, 2018 at 07:51 UTC »
For those nonbelievers out there, certain crystals/gems when they form form in perfect geometric shapes... It happs all the time in nature.
stosal on June 4th, 2018 at 09:30 UTC »
It has been a while and I don't think it was cube crystals, but if anyone wants to see shiny crystals kind of form in real time you can heat up some Gallium (it's online and cheaper than you'd think). Then just fish around in the liquid and sometimes you find a crystal formation in there. It's pretty cool, you can influence the way it forms as it cools down.
This made me think of it since it was really cool. I'm about the head to work but will see if I can find my Gallium when I get home.
HyperPedant on June 4th, 2018 at 12:42 UTC »
Hi everyone, I'm a geologist and I'd like to take the time to explain the "There are no straight lines in nature" line and why it's so goddamn stupid that it made me angry enough to post here. For the sake of my sanity and for brevity, I'm going to explain things a little hastily and simply. Any questions or nitpicks please feel free to add, I'm sure I messed up somewhere. A chemist would be better at explaining this at the atomic level.
In basic chemistry we learned that atoms bond together in many different ways. If we really think about it, it would be really easy to make a perfectly straight line by constantly chaining atoms together. This is how many things in our world forms, including minerals.
Pyrite for example is just iron - sulfur - iron - sulfur and it will keep doing this until the area is out of iron and/or sulfur.
Now, this is a single chain. Why stop there? Why not make more chains? Nothing is stopping us so...
Fe - S - Fe - S
Fe - S - Fe - S
Fe - S - Fe - S
But wait, there is a problem. We have iron atoms too close to one another and the same with sulfur. Those atoms don't want to share electrons with themselves. It's like having two positive pole magnets trying to touch, just won't work... but what if we shift every other line a single atom?..
Fe - S - Fe - S
S - Fe - S - Fe
Fe - S - Fe - S
Now we have every iron atom surrounded by sulfur and every sulfur atom snuggly surrounded by iron. Now, I could go into why this is prefered but for simplicity just think of it as have north and south pole magnets (I know it's different but it's still a good analogy). negative only wants to be surrounded by positive and positive only by negative.
We can extrapolate this to the third dimension and have each iron atom surrounded by 6 sulfur atoms (1 coming out of the screen, 1 going into the screen along that axis), each 90 degrees apart from each other. This leads to [gasp] perfect lines running through the newly-formed crystal. Not just lines of atoms but also diagonal lines of same atoms. If you want a model representation just take red and blue 1x1 legos and surround them just like described above but in 3d space. Not all minerals form cubes but many form hexagons (sapphires/rubies, same thing just different color), and even cooler shapes like dodecahedrons (garnets, 12-sided dice) and yes they have perfectly straight lines sometimes even straighter than we can make. There is a gay joke in there somewhere. please pm me your joke
Below is a useful site for checking out crystal structures of various minerals. You will learn very quickly that all crystals are formed by straight lines of various angles. Note the neato 3d model that you can spin and check out. I linked to Pyrite but check out Garnets, Topaz, Siderite, Diamond and Graphite, Calcite, etc by using the search function in the upper right.
https://www.mindat.org/min-3314.html