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thats interesting. Ive seen the videos how different frequencies will make different shapes with salt or sugar over speakers. Im excited to try to make the crystals

@ComplexSkepsisvehementalbeats This could be a major break through in bismuth crystal formation. I'm attending the second annual Cosmic Summit in June and would love to show the people there the results of your experiment 😀

This is how I got into looking up people making bismuth crystals. I kept seeing some shorts of a guy blasting music at a pot of forming crystals. They were huge, so I was extremely surprised when I looked up other people doing it, and everyone had a hard time making them. I still can't figure out how this guy does it. I think it's Life of Geology. He only has shorts.

All you can really do is heat the slag in order to extract as much of the non-oxidized metal from the slag as you can. Once the bismuth is oxidized, it isn't of much use. There are chemical ways to refine the raw metal back from the oxide, however it is cheaper to just buy fresh bismuth.

@@anthonyamundson6318 I was reading from another site about heating it with charcoal and molten sodium hydroxide. Wonder if that would work and/or if you've tried it. The only reason I ask is because I know bismuth is quite a rare resource and even if it's cheap (today) it kind of feels wasteful to not do it.

​@@ThePeterDislikeShow I haven't heard of such a process and have just enough chemistry knowledge to know I am not qualified to mess around with pure sodium hydroxide. Molten sodium hydroxide destroys glass and if you get it hot enough will also dissolve iron & steel. It will also burn/blind on contact (even in it's room temperature state), and also heats on contact with water and will literally pull water vapor directly out of the air in order to be able to dissolve. If you are concerned about waste of bismuth metal, it might help ease your concerns to know that most bismuth produced in the world today is made by refining the byproducts of sulfide mining at a handful of large metal mines. Most of bismuth metal's rarity actually comes from it not having enough commercial uses to justify mining bismuth ores directly. The ore is there (it is about as abundant as silver), it is just a dedicated industrial-scale bismuth mine would flood the market and crash bismuth prices, so no one does it.

@@backyardmineralogy2066 Yea I have reservations about doing that too. How about dissolving it into solution with a suitable acid followed by electrolysis? That's something I think I could handle safely.

​@@ThePeterDislikeShow That seems like it might be possible, but I am still not a professional chemist, so can't say for sure. I would also note that bismuth must be very pure in order to get iridescent colors on crystals. I am not sure if at-home electrolysis would achieve the desired purity (you would have potential contamination from the acid itself or from the electrodes. There is also the problem that this process turns a relatively small amount of bismuth oxide into a larger amount of aqueous waste acids with bismuth/etc contamination. If you are a chemistry enthusiast who can try this safely, then that is your prerogative. Otherwise, it is probably best just to leave the bismuth waste as-is.

Thanks for the kind words. I am glad you enjoyed the video. The geologic society is a great organization and go deep into the science of geology. They have collaborated with the Minnesota Mineral Club a few times to share speakers.

@@backyardmineralogy2066 😂…I don’t know why I came up with GSM, I get words mixed up in my head all the time🤦🏻, I meant the Minnesota Mineral Club. That one looks a bit more interesting. Thanks for clearing that up. Signing up tomorrow!

@@backyardmineralogy2066 got signed up! Seen they had your bismuth video on their site. That’s cool. Looks like the field trips are full, canceled or in Montana. Probably gonna go to the swap meet on the 26th. I got some stuff to bring there. Trying to find out where to sign up.

Thanks for watching. The actual bismuth oxide (the stuff the stays solid even under heat), can only be reclaimed by prohibitively expensive processing. What I have tried is to reclaim some of the elemental bismuth that was mixed in with the slag. The results weren't spectacular. I slowly added the slag to a small amount of liquid bismuth. I did manage to strain off a slightly larger amount of useful metal (meaning I did reclaim some), however I also had to deal with a big mess in the melting pot. The gain wasn't really worth the effort in my opinion. Also -> I would be careful with anything reclaimed in this way (ie. don't re-add it to a whole pot of good clean metal). If the slag reclaim had a lot of extra impurities you could weaken or completely remove the colorful oxidation pattern when growing crystals.

Thanks for the compliment. I'm glad you enjoyed it.