Part of my AS Level Physics coursework involves giving a talk on the properties of a material. Now rather than just make a powerpoint and mumble over
it i thought i'd be a little bit interesting and (well, try to) do a demonstration. Going by a certain makemag video i saw a while ago i decided to
try to show and explain (that looks like it's going to be the tricky bit ) the
piezoelectric properties of Potassium sodium tartrate.
Now i ordered some Potassium bitartrate and Sodium bicarbonate from the bay, they arrived today. This is where the question comes into it - every
guide i've found on the net says to use Sodium Carbonate, or if you can't get it to bake Sodium Bicarbonate. However after a bit of searching on this
forum i heard the suggestion to just use straight up bicarb. Is that possible? Are there any disadvantages to doing so?
Yeah, that's one of the ones i was looking at. So you're saying it's not possible to just substitute the Sodium Carbonate with Sodium Bicarbonate?
[Edited on 17-2-2012 by MilkTheFrog]ScienceSquirrel - 17-2-2012 at 09:16
Baking the sodium bicarbonate is easy and the sodium carbonate is a stronger and a lot more soluble base.
If you do not have much chemistry experience following the recipe is the easy way to go.Magpie - 17-2-2012 at 09:34
Here's a thread with my pictures of Rochelle salt, which grew quite quickly:
"Weighed out 39g Cream of Tartar and added to 49 mL of water. Placed slurry in 250mL beaker in water bath using Corelle bowl on stirrer-hotplate.
Heated until bath water at simmer. Added washing soda (Na2CO3) carefully with spatula until no more bubbles formed. Filtered hot solution into
evaporating dish. ~2 hours later 7 large crystals of Rochelle salt had formed."
) the
piezoelectric properties of Potassium sodium tartrate.
