How To Make Ruby in a Microwave

hi everyone in this video i'll be showing a method to create synthetic rubies in a microwave now this is my second video about creating synthetic rubies in the workshop my first one involved using an arc welder and a carbon electrode and a graphite crucible to heat a ruby base material until it was completely molten into a rather impressively large polycrystalline ruby elemental maker is the name of another youtube channel that originally inspired my first video and on his channel he had maybe a better method of creating synthetic ruby which was to take an oxyhydrogen torch and feed the ruby seed material into the flame using an electric toothbrush as an agitator this causes the seed material to melt in the flame and slowly build up on a substrate until you have rather sizable synthetic rubies and this is a simplified version of commercial synthetic ruby production now the process to create rubies that i'll be demonstrating in this video is even simpler than the previous two we've looked at that said that does not mean that any of you should try this at home in fact i highly recommend you do not try what i am going to show in this video at home least of all not in your home microwave the processes that we'll be using to make these rubies can potentially generate toxic byproducts that i definitely wouldn't want mixing with any food in the future so this is a chemistry microwave from now on [Music] [Laughter] so the first thing that we should look at as we dive into the process for making synthetic rubies is what rubies are made from ruby is a subset of sapphire sapphires can come in any number of colors and no matter what color they are they're just called sapphire unless they're red and then they're a ruby sapphires are made primarily from aluminum oxide and the contaminant in that aluminum oxide is what determines the color so to create our ruby seed material we take this primary ingredient which is our aluminum oxide and mix in about one or two percent of this green chromium oxide by weight and that's what i have here this is about 99 maybe a little more than that of aluminum oxide to one percent chromium oxide and the resulting powder is this soft green color it will make it very clear when we have ruby because this will have changed into a brilliant red that fluoresces vibrantly under uv light now the idea that creating rubies in a microwave might be possible at all was inspired by one particular piece of technology this right here what this is is a microwave kiln which a number of comments on my previous ruby making video suggested i look into this is about a 25 item and using this you can fuse glass glazed ceramics do all sorts of really high temperature things using nothing but a kitchen microwave people do really amazing work with these little microwave kilns i'm no artist but i was able to create this little pendant i don't know someone could throw that on a necklace maybe anyway this little kiln can do stuff like this the way this works is this is basically carved out of an alumina fire brick this is an extremely heat resistant material and there's a black conductive lining on the inside which takes the microwave radiation and converts it into infrared radiation on the inside of the container this allows the energy to really concentrate inside this little kiln reaching extraordinary temperatures the question is is a kiln like this capable of melting aluminum oxide and chromium oxide together into one solid ruby that's a tall order because like i said this is made out of an alumina fire brick which a large component of alumina is aluminum oxide so we're basically asking this kiln to melt the same material that it's made from so this might be a destructive process if it works so these kilns are made to be used with these little ceramic fiber blankets which set on the base of the kiln and prevent your glass work or other material that you're heating from sticking to the kiln itself so what i did was i put a little piece of this ceramic fiber on the base of this kiln and then put some of my ruby seed material on top of the tile i threw this in the microwave for about 10 minutes to start with just to see what would happen quick one minute pause at this point to talk about this video's sponsor bruntworkwear my only work-related injury serious enough to need a doctor's visit was caused by dropping a sheet of plywood edged down onto my foot which was unprotected because i did not want to spend the money on hard toe boots it didn't take me long to go buy a pair after that but the price still hurt brunt workwear has brought the cost of comfortable durable work boots way down so these composite toe boots this particular model is called the ring can protect your feet without costing half a week's pay as some of my previous boots have they use an adjustable width insole system that allows for a custom fit outside of the box these ones are waterproof and electrical hazard rated so that adds another layer of safety as i'm working on electrical projects the first thing i look for to determine how long a pair of boots will last is how many failure points do they have this is one solid piece of abrasion resistant mesh triple layered for waterproofing that's about the best sign of durability i can ask for you can try brunt workwear boots for 30 days and if they're not for you you can return them at no extra cost no questions asked click the link in the description box below to get 15 off your first pair of brunt boots plus free shipping and returns now after two cycles of these 10 minute run times i was indeed able to reach extraordinary temperatures inside of this kiln so much so that the base of this kiln actually developed a crack it just wasn't enough to melt the ruby seed material my theory was that this internal volume of this microwave kiln was just a little too big it was asking too much of this microwave to heat that large of an area to the temperatures required so my next step was to take a little piece of just an ordinary illumina fire brick and try to make a microwave kiln myself that was much smaller the idea being that it would be easier to heat a smaller compartment to the temperatures required i did lots of tests with this miniaturized kiln and even made kilns of different sizes and tried different positions in the microwave once again achieving very extraordinary temperatures for a microwave oven but not extraordinary enough to melt the aluminum oxide i think i just need to go about this in a different way one potential concept that could be able to help us in this area i've seen on a number of other youtube channels that being the generation of a plasma it's a common science experiment to cut a grape in half and use that as a nucleation point for this highly ionized air to form inside of the microwave that at a certain temperature actually becomes receptive to absorbing the microwave radiation and just becomes hotter and hotter as it floats around hopefully in an enclosed container inside of the microwave oven if you don't do this inside of a glass the plasma is free to float around anywhere inside of the microwave where it could damage the internal components now to be honest i have no idea what temperature this microwave generated plasma can produce but i presume it must be at least as hot as the temperature generated by these microwave kilns probably and hopefully far hotter so the question becomes how to direct all of that energy into the ruby seed material well i had the idea that since the plasma when generated in a microwave tends to collect at the top of whatever container you're generating it in if i could suspend this ruby seed material at the top of the container and above the steel or aluminum fibers that i will be using as the nucleation point for the plasma well maybe this aluminum seed material will fall right through the plasma as it's generated acting similarly to elemental maker's method of dropping the seed material through an oxyhydrogen flame so to test this idea i got myself a little glass vial and what i'll do is i'll put a little bit of this ruby seed material into the bottom now on top of this i will press down a small piece of aluminum wool and at that point tamp it down until it's spread out enough that it actually clings to the side of the container now i'm going to set this on a small glass plate because the rubies are going to fall out of the bottom of my container and i want them to be collected on something so we'll set this in the microwave first and then set the vial on top [Music] [Music] oh hot hot hot hot hot well this is what we've ended up with and you can see that my container shattered which demonstrates the heat of the plasma it was containing now i can't actually see well maybe there's some tiny rubies in there the definitive test is when we turn on a uv light there we go you can see that fluorescence in the fine dust that we had this is a great test for ruby for this process because we start with this light green powder with no fluorescence about it at all and when we've created ruby that makes it really obvious that you get this extremely fluorescent substance i think with a process similar to this we might be able to create rubies of a more substantial size okay we have finally arrived to the current best method that i have developed so what this involves is taking a small container in this case i found this candle stick holder which is actually really ideal for the process but you could also use something like a shot glass now this has a small hollow area because it's meant to hold both tea lights and the stick type candle so it's got a tiny little area in there which helps us use a minimal amount of our ruby seed material now with the previous method i was relying on the plasma generated by the microwaves to want to stick to the top of the container since they're so hot they tend to raise in this case i'm going to be doing the opposite i'm going to be relying on the nucleation point of that plasma to be the heat source for generating these rubies so for the nucleation again i'm going to be using some aluminum wool in this case less is more i'm going to take just a few fibers of my wool you might even have a hard time seeing this small quantity of fibers on this camera i take this and i press it down into the seed material at the bottom of this candle holder what we're looking for in the proper positioning of these aluminum fibers is to have them about halfway below the surface of our quantity of ruby seed material we have in this container and halfway in the air above the surface they need to extend into the air in order for the microwaves to latch onto them and nucleate into that plasma i'm not sure of the science behind why that happens by the way what i do know is that once the fibers actually do nucleate that plasma the plasma can actually follow them below the surface of this ruby seed material and that's how we'll heat the material even though it's at the bottom of the container and the plasma wants to rise so this is ready we'll stick it in the microwave and see what happens almost forgot i also have a little ceramic lid which i put on top of this reaction vessel to keep that plasma once again contained so it doesn't go free flying around the microwave and break stuff just as easily you could just put another glass on top of this to keep it covered and that should work just as well and in it goes [Music] that should be it all right only about 10 seconds all right just with that exciting few seconds it's ready to reveal the results let's take a look look at that you can see rubies have been made even without me getting the uv on there but let's uh turn that on check that out that is so awesome oh those are some sizable rubies and let's see if i can get a few out of there and here is our yield look at that that is crazy that i could make this many rubies in 10 maybe 15 seconds in the microwave now these are not the finest quality rubies by a long shot but considering the minimal amount of effort and equipment needed to make them this is highly impressive to me i'm certain with a little more refinement of the methods you could create even much larger rubies than this i'm just not certain yet on how to go about it there are actually quite a few rubies still left over in this seed material i don't think i can get them all out with my scoop i think probably to collect them all i would need to use a little screen or something do i even need to recap the process i used to do this this turned out so simple you just take your ruby seed material and put it in a small container put a few fibers of this aluminum wool in pop a lid on and throw it in the microwave for 10 to 15 seconds you end up with rubies how awesome is that all right everyone this is where i'm at on the microwave ruby project it took me a while to get there but it turned out to be a really simple solution in the end to making microwave rubies now there's still a lot of room for refinement i might jump back in on this project at some point in the future with an update if i come up with even better methods but meanwhile i think this is a good place to end it so i hope you enjoyed this video i thought i'd bring mo's back into the outro for once it's been a little while since i've had him in a video he's kind of a pain to film with sometimes but ah here he is he's doing well nice and healthy and always my loyal assistant all right everyone thank you for sticking around till the end thank you for watching thank you those of you who support me on patreon especially leave me some comments below i'd love to hear from you i'd love to hear more ideas for future videos thanks for watching i'll see you next time you

Channel: NightHawkInLight

Views: 632,338

Rating: 4.9457769 out of 5

Keywords: Microwave Plasma, Science, Experiment, Rubies, Ruby, How To, NightHawkInLight

Id: ybcdRQmQcHQ

Length: 16min 56sec (1016 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 29 2020