PICTURES OF THE WEEK
I was part of the Red Bull Creation, where I was paired with 3 new friends for a 72 hour design challenge. Here is what we built to answer the question: how do you get strangers to connect? Our answer was spring loaded platform, and steel “petals” with bells to beckon people over. We call it Pollinate
Three different sizes of springs means the platform has the same bounce for 1 to 4 people!
I’m glad they got my good side!
From Carob Seeds to Skull Crucibles
Or, the research rabbit hole I went down when looking up Cubic Zirconia
I really don’t know what prompted me to search for bulk cubic zirconia on Amazon, but I remember being shocked that they were quite affordable! Of course, this sent me down a rabbit hole for a little bit.
First off, a few terms: a carat is unit of mass equal to 200 mg (0.2 g; 0.007055 oz) and is used for measuring gemstones and pearls.
This is not to be confused with a karat - which is a measure of fineness used exclusively for gold. Fineness represents the mass of fine metal in an alloy.
Karat’s are a fractional measure of purity for gold alloys, with 24 parts in a whole. This system of calculation gives only the mass of pure gold contained in an alloy, NOT THE VOLUME.
So, 24-karat gold is pure ( 100% purity isn’t attainable, so it really means 99.95% purity), 18-karat gold is 18 parts gold, 6 parts another metal (forming an alloy with 75% gold), 12-karat gold is 12 parts gold (12 parts another metal), and so on.
Either way, both “carat” and “karat” are derived for the Greek word for “carob seed” - kerátion. Let this be a reminder to us all to be thoughtful when we set our standards, because you have no idea how long they will last!
Ok, back to cubic zirconia - compared to diamonds - they are denser, not as hard on the Mohs scale (8 - 8.5 vs the diamonds 10, and hardened steel is between 7.5 and 8... ), and has similar refractive and dispersion qualities. While diamonds have a bit of color to them, C Z are often entirely colorless. A run down of these qualities can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_simulant - which makes me really interested in Moissanite, synthetic diamonds (and LifeGem - who will create an authentic diamond from the ashes of your loved one).
While C Z do exist in nature, any that are used as gemstones are going to be synthetically created. And, that is where we get to an amazingly named object used to create them: the skull crucible. Turns out, cubic zirconia’s melting-point is too high for even platinum crucibles. So, what did they do? You know when you microwave something, and it is hot on the outside, but frozen in the center? They do that but the other way around.
They heat the center of a volume of cubic zirconia, the material forms its own "crucible" from its cooler outer layers. The "skull" part refers to the thin crust (or skull) of white zirconium dioxide that is formed around the crystallized core.
Heating is done by radio frequency induction using a coil wrapped around the the whole thing. The outside of the device is water-cooled in order to keep the RF coil from melting and maintain shape of the “skull”.
So, yes, I bought some, and having “diamonds” in my pocket makes me smile...
