Making Rubies In A Microwave Oven
Fairly recently a fellow asked the eternal question: Can I make synthetic rubies in my microwave? This was prompted by him coming across a microwave Kiln for making melted glass at home. Synthetic rubies are primarily made of Aluminum Oxide, with the contaminant determining its color, this so called "seed material" is then heated and produces the crystalline gem.
Now the kiln didn't work out and couldn't get hot enough, so he turned to something a bit more... creative. I'm sure many of you are familiar with the idea of not sticking metal in a microwave, or bad things happen, but you may not be totally familiar with why or how. The reason actually has to do with Plasma Physics, yes Plasma Physics. The microwave energy interacts with metal and generates a super heated plasma gas which can be several thousand degrees, hot enough to quickly melt your microwave or cause serious injury. You can actually watch a bit about it [here].
So, how does this help make rubies? Well the guy decided to try and harness this super heated plasma to get the seed material hot enough to make rubies, and make he did. To do this he placed a small amount of the material in a glass candle holder with a little bit of aluminum wool stuck in it and capped it all with a ceramic lid to contain the plasma. 10-15 seconds later, rubies.
Needless to say you probably shouldn't try this at home, and definitely not with a microwave you cook food in, given there can be some unknown volatile byproducts. But its kind of cool that you can quick serve gemstones with this kind of chemistry hack. You can watch the full video of the process [here].
-- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
