I’m sure that many of you have had the maddening experience of having your computer crash and unless you are remarkably scrupulous, have lost some data as a consequence. Well, I had a computer crash in a very unexpected fashion a few years ago. I was sitting up in my study on the second floor of our old house (a bit over 120 years old then–the house not me), when I heard a strange creaking sound and then suddenly part of the ceiling started raining down on my computer, me, and the microscope setup which I had for doing photomacrography. I sat there absolutely stunned. The debris consisted of lath and plaster which was apparently the fashion in olden days. I’ll show you five pictures just to convince you that I’m not making this up.
As you can see, my study was a shambles and the plaster dust invaded not only my computer but, of course, the external hard drives and virtually everything else in the room.
Now, this is a lead up to explaining to you why I am going to show you a bunch of crystal images which I cannot identify in terms of their composition. I ask you think of it as a gallery which you are wandering through and you walk up to look at the little card beside the painting giving the name of the artist and the title of the painting and you discover the title “Untitled” and this occurs over and over. However, occasionally, you may find one with a whimsical title which in my case will be a result of my hyper-paredolia. However, you might interject and inquire whether or not I kept a written record of the chemical composition of my crystal creations. Well, yes, I did. However, when we moved to a smaller, one level house, many items got misplaced or lost, among them a number of my notebooks. So, much as I would like to be able to tell you the specifics and, indeed to know them myself, I could only guess and I don’t want to mislead you so, you will have to settle for my “Untitleds” and “Whimsicals”. I can’t simply discard all these images, because some of them I quite like and so I am sharing some with you.
This first one, because of the disk, very likely had some Ascorbic acid in the mixture.
The same may be said of the next two images, although because the disks are not compact, there is no question but that the Ascorbic acid was mixed with another reagent.
The next image very likely had a Potassium salt in the mixture judging from the crystal and the second image is a closeup. You can see that if you look slightly above and to the left of center in the first image.
The next 2 images were probably taken from the same slide judging from the crystals and the coloration. The second one, in the center, looks like a carving of the head of some primitive god with the head of a serpent extending down just above the nose.
Since I yielded to pareidolia, I might as well jump into it with both feet, possibly into a large pool on a hot day. However, I’m not a very good swimmer and this pool looks more like it would have a superabundance of algae and thus, not so good for the immersion of my delicate body.
And, as I suspected, a pond sample revealed some rather striking vegetation, as you can see below.
When I scraped my long-handled net along the bottom, I pulled up the decaying remains of a crayfish.
In a nearby pond, with much better water for observation, I found a large-headed elongate fish dozing along the bottom.
Next, back to untitled images. These next 3 I have no clue at all as to what reagents were involved, but I rather like them.
This slide very likely also had some Ascorbic acid in the mix. It rather reminds me of the steppes in parts of Asia where farmers terrace the land to maximize their crop areas.
Here we have 2 colorful abstracts with rather interesting groupings of forms. They could almost be micro-sections of minerals.
Next we have a crystalline form which very likely is in a mixture containing a Potassium salt.
Well, let’s make a move up into the cosmic dimension and first we have a bunch of planets hanging around a fiery super-sun event and then four planets hovering over on the dark side.
In our own solar system, we might find a glimpse of one of the rings of Saturn and as the comedian Mark Russell commented: “The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage” and, sure enough, here you can see some of it floating around.
And over in the asteroid belt, we catch a glimpse of the extraordinary rare event called “The Arrow of Time”.
Back here on Earth, there are a lot of humans who love mysteries and are certain that there are events, artifacts, and monuments that can only be explained by invoking alien beings as having produced them. Well, we might have an example in this next image, which shows strange writing on a stone wall and humans have never been successful in deciphering the message. I like to imagine that it is a complexly obscene message telling Earthlings what they can do with their so-called “civilization”.
One more fanciful indulgence and then, in conclusion, I will just show you a few untitled abstracts. However, this one just might be a tin of redfish ready to tempt the adventurous
palate or, if you’re an artist, your palette.
And now, finally, 4 untitled abstracts.
I hope you’ve had some fun wandering through this gallery. I hope to have another one soon, only this next time, I have the documentation, so I can tell you what mixtures produced the given image.