Jack writes: > Well, I did it. What I did was take a laser sight I had on one of my > weapons and aim it through the container containing some home brew CS. I > also had some commercial CS that contained 5-6 PPM CS. Also had a glass of > good clean mountain spring water from my 285' well. By visual examination > the two gave the same characteristics inside the container. The well water > showed nothing but the beam going through. Both CS samples showed a path > with some fuzzing of the light as it went through, the wate did not. The > beam was then it's normal self after passing through. Conclusion: There > was something lurking in the liquid of each CS container and it looked about > equal in appearance. Not a scientific test, but it substantiates that the > CS bottles had something suspended and the well water did not.
Jack, You are definitely on the right track: What I have seen people do is put a piece of white paper on the other side of the clear container, maybe a foot or so away. Try different distances, try different containers - the labs have special flat-sided ones, but if you use the same container in the same position for all your tests it might work ok = change nothing in the setup but the contents of the container, so what you see changing is just the effect of the contents, not anything else. The laser light will make a pattern on the paper, and there is a real chance that you can use the pattern made by the lab-tested CS to see if your home-made CS compares. If the pattern is distinctive enough you might be able to use it as a reference pattern. Try your comparison with well water this way, and maybe even *make* some CS in the test apparatus, with the laser on, to see what happens as the CS is being made. As a side note: I think there is a lot of scientific literature on CS and laser light scattering (I think that is the "raman scattering effect") because CS is used as the base material that other things get added to for testing, so the base CS characteristics are probably very well known. As soon as I get a chance I will go ask at the school and see what I find and share it with the group. Richard [email protected]
