At 05:53 PM 9/19/2009, you wrote:
The problem is that one does know where the microscopic pits will
appear, sptje imager hs to have very high resolution. Further, the
cathode is usually buried in the cell.Keeping focus through the
electrolyte and evolved bubbles is another problem. Such a quest
demands a specific experimental setup..
I'm planning on using a microscope camera like the Celestron 44300, I
just bought one to play with it. The cathode will be a Galileo-type
cathode, roughly, with the cathode against a piece of CR-39; the
microscope will be observing the wire through the CR-39. As the CR-39
is damaged, there may be loss of crispness of image. Further, the hot
spots may not be directly against the CR-39, but to the side of the
wire; still, I expect that visible light from hot palladium should be
there, if it is melting.
So: this cathode won't be "buried in the cell," it will be against a
piece of CR-39 against the cell wall, held there. The CR-39 isn't
deeply damaged, so what it will be is a diffuser screen even when
pretty heavily damaged, the image should still be reasonably clear,
particularly because only a thin layer at the surface is damaged.
The camera is 40x or 400x. Look, I'll be happy to see *bubbles* on the
camera. But I think that if this whole apparatus is in the dark, there
will be stuff to see. The camera I bought has illuminator LEDs, but
they are on a removable circuit board with two wires going to it; I'll
just put in a switch.... Want to see bubbles, leave the light on. Want
to see if there is anything else, turn the light off.
If I'm lucky, the image chip in the microscope is IR-sensitive. They
would not bother with a filter, I'd guess. There may be a brightness
control that is set to handle the fixed illumination from the LEDs,
and in the end we may have to engineer our own camera, but perhaps
using a commercial camera as a base, just tweaking the electronics.
