Category: Chemistry

Anything chemical, crystals, precipitates etc.

Demonstration Workshop on Utility of the Foldscope in Education and Research on the Occasion of National Science Day

On 28 February 2019, ICAR–National Bureau of Agricultural Insect Resources (ICAR–NBAIR), Bengaluru, and ICAR Research Complex for North Eastern Hill Region (ICAR RCNEHR), Umiam, jointly organised a workshop for B.Sc. (CBZ) students at BGS Science Academy and Research Center in Chikkaballapura, Karnataka. Over 370 students attended the National Science Day celebrations, out which 150 students...
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From combing your hair to foldscoping…

Hairfall is one of the many things that may happen while you are combing your hair. Some of these hair apparently have a whitish ‘bulb’ at their root portion. I wondered how this would look magnified. Made a slide of it and observed it through foldscope. The foldscope had polarizing filters attached to it and…

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Ammonium dihydrogen phosphate

This molecule is used as a fertilizer. It is also used as a fire extinguisher, a piezoelectric transducer and in children’s crystal growing kits (where I obtained it). I took this photo with polarizing light and then rotated the polarizer to get the next picture.

Calcium chloride – polarized

This salt is used to give fireworks their orange colour, as a de-icer, desssicant and in heating pads. Not only is it hygroscopic, taking water from the atmosphere, but it is also deliquescent — absorbing so much water from the atmosphere as to form an aqueous solution. I made this slide with a glass slide…

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Chromatin Condensates

Mixing a bacterially expressed chromatin binding protein with a large piece of DNA results inthe formation of chromatin droplets that separate themselves from the surrounding liquid, like oil in a puddle. If you look carefully, you can spot a merging event of 2 droplets from the above picture The droplets flow and interact with themselves...
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