A disjecta membra maybe

[Scribblenauts]

I have some water saving crystals which I have been using in my herbs to prevent them drying out. I'm not sure if anyone is aware of them but they are small crystals which look like coarse sugar. You add water and they swell to around 500 times their size. Seeing we have experienced periods of no rain, I thought these would be a good idea.......or perhaps not.

_http://science.howstuffworks.com/question581.htm

Anyway curiosity got the better of me, what are these crystals and how do they work?

What I found was that they are either polyacrylamide which was first developed by Monsanto under the trade name Krilium which was first used as a soil stabiliser in the 50's. Either that or Sodium (or Potassium) Acrylate developed by Dow Chemicals.

Now here's the rub. Polyacrylamide is a polymer formed from acrylamide which is a known carcinogen AND a neurotoxin. And Polyacrylamide in it's chained state degrades back over time to form acrylamide. The stability of this acrylamide seems to degrade in 4-12 days to form acryllic acid........

I read this and I found it interesting
we know crystals grow with the help of water, so they contain water of course
so I guess the question is : how to extract that water again "for whatever reason" ?!
(of course that will be by dissolving "or maybe destroying" the structure of the crystal), and this is the case here but turns out not to be safe you see!
but I think there is a safe way to store and extract pure water from crystals, and this is a very ancient technology (the manipulation of crystals) and what I can recall about it for example :


1- the staff of Moses, he used it to extract water from a stone by hitting it as God told him (I am sure that stone was some kind of a crystal)
"And when Moses prayed for water for his people, We said, "Strike with your staff the stone." and there gushed forth from it twelve springs"
Quran 2:60 & 7:160


2- in Greek mythology we have the story of the titan Prometheus who tricked Zeus to choose the pile of bones by covering it with fat
it might not be obvious but looks like Prometheus who created man was a "crystal maker or manipulator" who mastered that technology, giving "Zeus" the "bones" gets interesting with the term Piezoelectricity
_en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piezoelectricity#Bone
_en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus#Mythology


I mean why do life forms need water? are they crystals? are we crystals?, and are we also self powered? is it that food is only our fuel while we are the generator itself ?
anyway maybe it's Gods' technology but it was once in the hands of man, or is it still?

 

[Deleted member 8431]

we know crystals grow with the help of water, so they contain water of course

Not necessarily. Some crystals do contain water but not all of them. We generally call them "hydrates", like copper sulfate pentahydrate for instance (beautiful blue crystals).

See, the thing with the quote you posted is that it talks about polymer crystals. They can indeed "absorb" a lot of water and that is why they are used in wastewater facilities to dehydrate sludge for instance. But we are not talking about "crystals" as in mineral crystals (or rocks). We're talking more or less about a plastic which can adopt a more or less crystalline structure (depending on their molecular structure).

The only way I know to extract water from hydrates or polymers is to heat them so that water evaporates. There could be other ways though (I dunno).

Peace.

 

[Scribblenauts]

we know crystals grow with the help of water, so they contain water of course

Not necessarily. Some crystals do contain water but not all of them. We generally call them "hydrates", like copper sulfate pentahydrate for instance (beautiful blue crystals).

See, the thing with the quote you posted is that it talks about polymer crystals. They can indeed "absorb" a lot of water and that is why they are used in wastewater facilities to dehydrate sludge for instance. But we are not talking about "crystals" as in mineral crystals (or rocks). We're talking more or less about a plastic which can adopt a more or less crystalline structure (depending on their molecular structure).

The only way I know to extract water from hydrates or polymers is to heat them so that water evaporates. There could be other ways though (I dunno).

Peace.

Hi JayMark
It's exactly the structure I'm interested in, to me crystal = structure, and I'm interested in structures that contain water because these structures, to me are kind of "alive"
and what I was trying to say here is kind of that with a good knowledge in chemistry, some biology, and some meditation skills, one can have the chance to heal (or even transform) most physical structures in an all natural way, because you know they inhale and exhale some water, put that with sound and music and how they affect water and you will get a punch of good theories about what to do and how to do it