The amazing and cool photo thread

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Our* picture from my recent paper is shown in 'Chemistry in pictures' yesterday..

http://cen.chempics.org/post/158491831582/frustration-when-n-butanol-is-supercooled-to-140

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* It literally was a collaborative effort taking this picture - this is what I could see down the eyepiece of the microscope during my experiment, but the camera attached to the microscope could only capture about 1/4 of this area - so a student in our group suggested using his own camera - we unbolted the microscope camera and just plonked the other camera on the top... we couldn't see the focusing so I moved the sample up and down by a few microns each time and took a set of pictures, knowing that at least one of them should be in good focus, and the end result was a nice high resolution widefield image of the sample.

The sample is pure n-butanol that was supercooled well below its melting point at which point it undergoes an unusual transition where it forms spherical droplets that grow over time - this 'transformed' butanol turns out to be a liquid crystal. I grew them for about 30 minutes and then raised the temperature to just below the melting point, which has the effect of causing the untransformed liquid surrounding the droplets to crystallise (in other words, the liquid 'freezes' as you raise the temperature!). This picture shows the result - liquid crystal droplets surrounded by crystalline butanol. They are chemically identical but physically different, and various spectra (wide angel X-ray and Raman scattering to be exact) show that the various forms of butanol (the original liquid, the droplets and the crystal) are all in different arrangements.
 
@Touring Mars, that is brilliance.

Can you magnify some of your own sperm next time and make it into a gif. so we can see little TMs?

Sorry, I had to say something crude because compliments aren't my strong suit.
 
@Touring Mars

Firstly, will it kill us?

Secondly, will this make iPhones cheaper?

And finally, are they actually all different colours or is that due to the angle of reflected light?
No, No and the second one :)

Can you magnify some of your own sperm next time and make it into a gif. so we can see little TMs?
Could? Yes... Should? Probably not...
 
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Not really a cool photo. More amazing (to me at least).

One of our clients cats had been urinating blood for months. They finally ok'ed X-Rays yesterday.

Upon x ray review we saw this boulder sitting in the bladder. Today we removed this 1cm X 2 cm bladder stone.
It's as smooth as a river stone. Unusual as most stones are rough and spiked.

Cat is recovering well.
 
Impressive picture! ;) Love the story in the comments of the hurricane beach trip! ;)

The comments are funny and sad at the same time. People are like... "oh comeon that tornado is at least 20 minutes out, it poses no immediate threat". Ok... but I would just stand there gawking at it, taking photos, and trying to remember the moment that I came that close to a tornado. I do that with things I see on a fairly regular basis. I cannot imagine being so bored with seeing tornados that I just keep mowing the lawn.

"Staged" was another comment. If it is, props to them for a job well done.

Even if it's staged, it's still the (at least) equivalent of this:

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