"Ice Crystal Growth in Microfluidics" by Graham Johnson
"Ice Crystal Growth in Microfluidics" by Graham Johnson
I don't know about you, but this is what I need more of right now in this weather - visions of very, very cold things! This one in particular is interesting because it is an image taken during research onto ice-binding proteins. The temperature is suddenly lowered, to study the dendritic crystal growth which happens in an enclosed matrix.
It is pretty warm here too... But I like the heat! I am very tropical 😆
That's an interesting concept.. Crystallization of a liquid in a microfluidic chamber. I know that one of the properties of microfluidics is that the flow of a liquid is laminar instead of turbulent. But I don't know if this would have a consequence to the growth of a crystal. I am thinking that it wouldn't matter, because the molecules that stick to the growing ends would not care about whether they arrived there turbulently or laminarly - at least not at the molecular scale. But maybe there are some macroscopic effects - like shear forces and viscosity gradients - that do contribute to the shaping of the crystal.
I'm just glad someone's working on it, because I have no idea! 😅