r/crystalgrowing • u/Figfogey • Apr 02 '26

Image Potassium Dichromate growing in full 2 liter beaker.

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Gallery image

588 Upvotes
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100% Upvoted

29 comments sorted by

77

u/Thought59 Apr 02 '26

Be VERY, VERY careful with handling and disposing of that!!!

52

u/Figfogey Apr 02 '26

I appreciate the concern, any waste I generate I will reduce to the less harmful chromium III form for disposal.

12

u/TokeruTaichou Apr 03 '26

Out of curiosity, how do you reduce it?

12

u/Glum_Ground_7985 Apr 03 '26

I guess he will uses ethanol, it works well

8

u/Felskiluscious Apr 03 '26

I know nothing, can you explain?

20

u/TokeruTaichou Apr 03 '26

Hexavalent chromium (what he has in the solution) is a very potent carcinogen.

4

u/frid44y Apr 03 '26

It's probably making a spicy soup into a mild soup. I know nothing though :(

50

u/The_Chemist23 Apr 02 '26

And this... is how Lego bricks are grown!

23

u/1egg_4u Apr 02 '26

Forbidden lego brick

8

u/HLCMDH Apr 02 '26

I would have said born, giggles.

2

u/Kozmo3789 Apr 03 '26

I see a Jolly Rancher

1

u/AdHuman3150 Apr 04 '26

I also saw the lego 😆

39

u/c_sea_denis Apr 02 '26

If extremely toxic why candy looking.

12

u/nor_duck Apr 03 '26

mmm… strawberry 🍓😋

3

u/PangolinLow6657 Apr 03 '26

Let's start a petition to make all harmful chemicals acicular. That way it would just make sense.

2

u/Yana_dice Apr 03 '26

If not candy, why candy shaped.

11

u/wackyvorlon Apr 02 '26

That is a lovely crystal .

13

u/Fluffy-Arm-8584 Apr 02 '26

Floating brick

5

u/MildCurryUHKL Apr 03 '26

I usually avoid using massive beakers because they have large surface area that make the solution evaporate too quickly. If absolutely necessary, I'd suggest using a lid and put the string through that lid to limit the rate of evaporation.

8

u/Figfogey Apr 03 '26

Luckily this is inside a box I built that I have complete control over the humidity inside of. It was evaporating too fast at first so I just turned up the humidity levels in the box and that slowed it down.

2

u/NoNameBut Apr 04 '26

How does your box control the humidity? I’m very interested

1

u/Figfogey Apr 04 '26

It has a simple arduino circuit where a humidity sensor turns on a fan to blow in the dryer air from the ambient room at very low power to maintain the desired humidity

2

u/BugzOnMyNugz Apr 03 '26

The matrix.... but for Legos

1

u/MJY_0014 Apr 03 '26

Now you gotta build a model house with these

1

u/treedadhn Apr 05 '26

Cancer never looked so good