#calcium aluminium copper borate or smth

[your-god-empress-lavender]

Short update

College is pretty nice, the people are great, the classes mostly easy (though the workload is a bit worse than IB and worse, most of the homework is actually graded). What i really wanted to talk about was the magnetically interesting substance. I've finally got some pure, lab-grade chemicals from a local science supply store, and have done quite a few experiments.

The first thing i will report is that this thing is so porous/puffy, probably because all the water boiling off leaves tiny pockets in everything. Next thing is that i'm consistently seeing much stronger colouration (most batches come out quite strongly green, then turn orange/red as they grow older, and usually only after re-heating, they sometimes turn white). In the first experiments, the red particles only showed up about 20 minutes after finishing cooking and showed no response to magnets, whereas the green ones were strongly reacting. After further study, this is expected to not be because whatever is giving the colouration is not giving the effect after oxidation (or reduction maybe???????) but rather because the pieces that turned red were the ones removed from the cooking vessel first and thus had the most exposure to moisture, which waterlogged them. This brings me to my next point which is that every* batch that worked was deliquescent and within around 25 minutes of cooking, every particle having its own little puddle around it. This, probably obviously, is a problem as it means that the samples *must* be tested and or used fairly immediately. Related to this, i tried one batch where i kept a standard formulation, but removed just one of the ingredients. As there were 4 ingredients, there were 4 batches. (none showed any response to a magnet) The batch with removed calcium was an extremely dark green, showed no response to a magnet, but did not deliquesce nor absorb moisture to an appreciable degree. It also fluoresced strongly under UV light, but only the samples that were partially cooked but not fully (it bubbled way more than any other batch and threw blobs of partially cooked copper aluminium borate everywhere). The batch without copper just sat there as white chunks and then dissolved itself, very uninteresting. The batch without aluminium was faintly blue, but generally just kinda a lame powder that dissolved itself. The batch without the boron was really lame, it also just sat there as a dark green powder and then dissolved itself.

Some batches (most notably the first one) were more interesting in that they would dissolve themselves into puddles the colour of the particles that the puddles surrounded, but then when water was added, they would turn into a bright blue like most hydrated copper. Other interesting effects include the gradual whitening of the material with each time it was re-heated and the fact that over all, there weren't significantly different effects between particles of different colours which indicates, of course, that whatever is causing colour has little to no effect on the magnetic effect.

Batches with less calcium show less sensitivity to water, even to the extent of not dissolving/coming loose when water is added (adding calcium solution and then re-heating it, then trying to take it out with water does seem to work tho). Batches with very little (but not no) calcium are barely sensitive to a magnet, however batches which are extremely high in calcium show somewhat worse sensitivity to a magnet, but are also extremely deliquescent. The batch with extremely high copper showed no reaction to a magnet, but also took longer to dissolve itself and as of 24 hours after making it, has not changed colour at all. Batches where boric acid was used to replace the borax (admittedly, not by mole, but instead by volume of the saturated solution, so not really a good substitution) showed significantly less sensitivity to a magnet, but also showed slightly less deliquescence.

* There was one batch that both showed the effect and didn't dissolve itself, however it was also the weakest batch that showed any response and so i kinda just scrapped it

Also, before i go, i wanted to say that for my earlier attempts (back at home) "high sensitivity to a magnet" meant "there's like a good 1/15 of the particles that jump or react to this magnet" but now "high sensitivity" means "just about every single particle reacts to a magnet in some way and the first time i brought a magnet near the sample, a few dozen particles were violently shot across the room". I don't know how much of this is just due to purity changes and how much is something else, but either way, i'm impressed. (also, if it's just purity changes, i must have been significantly overestimating the purity of what i had before)