ciaran.mooney
New Member
Afternoon,
I am currently doing a summer project in a University on crystal shape and size. This requires that I dissolve nickel and iron salts in water, and allow them to cool and recrystallise.
I want to be able to control the cooling rate of the salt solutions, so that I can see the effect on the crystals. Unfortunately I don't have any equipment that will do this.
I confess that I have no electronics experience, and hoping for someone to give me a circuit diagram that I can follow. I am interested in learning about electronics, but I hoped the need would not be as immediate as it is now. I am sure that this kind of equipment could be made in less than an hour by someone technically minded, but would take me weeks!
My idea was to emulate those "holiday light timers" you can get, where a lamp plugs into a time, that plugs into the wall. But instead of a lamp have a hot oil bath, and instead of a timer a temperature sensor.
The user changable settings would be:
* Start Tempeature
* End temperature
* Duration
The circuit should then calculate a rate of cooling, and carry it out. Essentially a linear graph of time vs temperature.
So I could set it to max = 75*C, min = 20*C, interval = 10 hours, and it would automagically work out the rate of cooling for me.
Is this possible with simple electronics? Or would I have to get my hands on some kind of IC and program it from a PC?
Thanks,
Ciarán
I am currently doing a summer project in a University on crystal shape and size. This requires that I dissolve nickel and iron salts in water, and allow them to cool and recrystallise.
I want to be able to control the cooling rate of the salt solutions, so that I can see the effect on the crystals. Unfortunately I don't have any equipment that will do this.
I confess that I have no electronics experience, and hoping for someone to give me a circuit diagram that I can follow. I am interested in learning about electronics, but I hoped the need would not be as immediate as it is now. I am sure that this kind of equipment could be made in less than an hour by someone technically minded, but would take me weeks!
My idea was to emulate those "holiday light timers" you can get, where a lamp plugs into a time, that plugs into the wall. But instead of a lamp have a hot oil bath, and instead of a timer a temperature sensor.
The user changable settings would be:
* Start Tempeature
* End temperature
* Duration
The circuit should then calculate a rate of cooling, and carry it out. Essentially a linear graph of time vs temperature.
So I could set it to max = 75*C, min = 20*C, interval = 10 hours, and it would automagically work out the rate of cooling for me.
Is this possible with simple electronics? Or would I have to get my hands on some kind of IC and program it from a PC?
Thanks,
Ciarán
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