Showing posts with label Surfactants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Surfactants. Show all posts

Saturday, November 11, 2017

Barczak and Lindberg - Storming Norman 2017

Micelles in Evarun!

The last several years I head to Norman Oklahoma to attend the annual Institute for Applied Surfactant Research (IASR) meeting. What else is in Norman? My friend and author Tom Barczak, a fellow Perseid Press contributor with a poetic, dark style.  Barczak is an artist & architect who has a beautiful ability to capture angelic warfare with drawing pencil and keyboard. 

Before the seminars started, I squeezed in another Starbuck's meeting.  This time I got a glimpse into Tom's sketches for his Hands of the Dragon book...and  was allowed to share a bit with you (see below)!  And what out! I think creepy surfactant assemblies are inspiring him!

Tom Barczak holding Helen's Daimones : S E Lindberg with Mouth of The Dragon
Tom Barczak & his notebook

The notes read: "A suitable sacrifice .... A cenotaph of blood..."
[click to expand image]
Barczak's Notebook: Hands of the Dragon


Eh gad, is that a micelle?

Of course my mind is focused on surfactants, and what do I see has Tom's notebook? A micelle? That's a spherical assembly of soap molecules, a key technology for detergency. Well he claims his sketch is his visualization of an epic assembly of people as they execute a divine ritual.  Anyway, I adore micelle formations, having illustrated them for Prof. Steven Abbott's Surfactant Science: Principles and Practice ... with the app Practical Surfactants (available for free).  But they also creepy me out (surfactants can form some scary "living" structures, such as myelins). 

So the moral of this story is:

 Obey your muse... and be wary of self-assembled structures!


Micelle Illustrations By S.E. for Steven Abbott

Surfactant Packing Illustrations - S.E. for Steven Abbott



Previous Barczak Coffee Runs:

  • 2016: Drawing Evarun Dragons & Dyscrasia Skeletons
  • 2015: Heroika #1: Dragon Eaters
  • 2014: "Soap, disease, and dragons"

Interviews and Reviews









Friday, November 27, 2015

Practical Surfactants - Illustrations and Phase Diagram Widget





I've had the pleasure of knowing Professor Steven Abbott for several years now.  His credentials are solid (Oxford & Harvard Chemistry PhD, U. Strasbourg Post Doc in Nobel Prize lab, Senior Manager ICI, Research Director MacDermid Autotype, Visiting Professor U. Leeds, Independent Scientist, Consultant, Trainer, Author) and his personality splendidly high-energy.

His knack for making web-based, interactive models is well-established, especially for coatings, adhesives, and solubility issues. More recently, he has created a package for understanding surfactants/detergents, available online - Practical Surfactants site and now in a Practical Surfactants- Free eBook.  I was thrilled to be able to provide some illustrations for the eBook (i.e. for surfactant curvature) as well as co-developing the Phase Diagram tab which includes some awesome sub-tabs:
Two-Phase Regions and Lever-Rule Widget / Ternary Diagram Basics /
  Understand the Gibb's Phase Rule / Ternary Data Viewer

Practical Surfactants - Online Interface




Hanging out with Professor Abbott (2019)

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Soap, Disease, and Dragons - Visiting Norman OK

Talking art, books, and synesthesia with illustrator and artist of Viel of the Dragon 
  1. SOAP: 

  2. This month I visited Norman OK, with the primary goal of attending a consortia on surfactants run by chemical engineering professors at Oklahoma University (IASR).  I am not the only scientist attending who has an artistic side; in fact Professor John Scamehorn has ventured into producing film (he is leading a steampunk web series no less, due out in late 2015).
  3. DISEASE: 

  4. Before the consortia began, I managed to connect with writer/illustrator Tom Barczak who resides in Norman. I had interviewed Tom Barczak early this year (July 2014)
    Over some Starbuck's coffee we discussed art, writing, and disease. Of course, my own series fictionalizes the alchemical humors, posing them as a source of necromancy; an imbalance of humors was called a Dyscrasia (a word popular in 1880). 

  5. Tom, ever fascinated with sensing strange/beautiful things, discussed Synesthezia.  This ailment is a modern one, and refers to a secondary stimulus of senses.  For instance, a subset is called Chromesthesia, in which listening to sounds will trigger recoloring of whatever is being viewed by eye: one could be looking at a white wall and it would change to red or blue as certain music is played.  Great material for magic/fantasy! I can't wait to see how Tom translates his insights.

DRAGONS

Tom has a wonderful illustrated, poetic series that begins with 
Veil of the Dragon (reviewed May 2014). He is just now releasing an audio book voiced by Neil Hellegers. Check out the below video trailer.  If you like dark, poetic fantasy, you'll enjoy this.


Saturday, March 5, 2011

Creepy Microscopy: Animated Myelins and Tentacle Stick Figures

Always on the lookout for spooky textures detected with a microscope or revealed in my kids' drawings, I have been enthralled and terrified to watch soap dissolve.  To be scared like me, you'll need to read lots of Lovecraftian horror stories...then use a microscope to monitor soap hydration.  Obviously, there are limited folks who'll fit that call to order, so below may suffice:

Polarized Light Microscopy (PLM) is really cool method that reveals ordered structures within microstructures like nylon fibers, mineral grains, and wet soap. [For gearheads wanting to learn more, check out the interactive (Flash and Java) Tutorials at Florida State's Microscopy University and the separate primer on using PLM to study cystals: Birefringent Crystals].

  

Ref-1 Hydrating Soap

Fran Rosevear (1912-2010) was a Procter & Gamble phase chemist and microscopist who authored seminal papers of PLM for characterizing surfactants (soap) as they hydrate (get wet).  The tentacle like structures in the "Neat" phase are bilayer tubes (see images).  If you watch water enter dry soap, you can witness these structures form; Rosevear called the analogous, equilibrated structure "oily streaks".


Myelins are flexible crystals, laminated tubes of the same oily streak structure described by Rosevear.  Watching them be born is a real hoot.  They emerge like wiggling snakes as water works it's way into concetrated surfactant.
Ref-2 Oily Streaks

Here are some myelins I witnessed form using Differential Interferrence Contrast  microscopy (a form of PLM).  Do these not scream "Lovecraft dreamed me into existence"?  The myelins look like swelling brain matter.  If I did not know better, I might claim they were sentient worms instead. 

 
 
Mike Cates of the University of Edinburgh and collaborators have been studying myelin formation and have some more compelling images.  This image was shared by Louisa Reissig's presentation: Myelin Formation during the Dissolution of Lamellar Phase @ the 81st ACS Colloid & Surface Science Symposium (June 24-27, 2007), Newark, DE.

Here is another image from literature, this one from nonionic systems (BH Chen, C. M., JM Walsh, PB Warren (2000 ). "Dissolution rates of pure nonionic surfactants." Langmuir.)


Okay, so I worked visions of evil tentacles into the Lords of Dyscrasia Book trailer (another post). This is the second video featured in the trailer:

These structures (and the horrors they evoke) are also affecting my creature design for my sequel to Lords of Dyscrasia.  Below, I share imagery my son drew up for me:
  
Connor's tentacled monsters - (created ~2010)  


Yes, I have been known to ask my kids to contribute to the creative process.  For completeness sake, I share some my daughter dreamed up a few years ago: 

Erin's "Blood Skeletons" (created ~2003)