Blue Borax Jewels

Blue Borax Jewels Borax beads are used to identify certain metals using the bead test. Make blue borax beads that resemble small jewels. Keep the jewels or use them to examine the characteristic blue color produced by cobalt. Borax Bead Materials boraxcobalt chloridewire loopcandle, gas burner, or alcohol lamp Procedure Gently tap the wire loop against a surface to make certain it is clean of any residue. Heat the loop in a flame to burn off any contaminants.Dip the hot wire loop in a small amount of borax. The heat of the loop should melt enough borax on contact to allow you to form a small borax bead. Heat the loop with borax in the flame until a white glassy bead forms. Remove the loop from the flame. Tap the loop against a surface to dislodge the borax bead. This is a white bead of pure borax, which you can now compare with the blue bead youre about to make.Making a blue bead, or a bead from any metal salt, follows much the same process, except you need to incorporate the metal into the bead. To make a blue bead, mix a small amount of cobalt chloride into a bit of borax. You may need to crush the cobalt chloride to grind it. You can use the back of a teaspoon to achieve this.Once the cobalt chloride and borax are mixed together, heat the clean wire loop and press the hot loop into the mixture. R eturn the coated loop to the flame to produce a blue bead. Tap the loop against a surface to free your bead so you can examine it. If you hold the bead up to the light, you should see a lovely translucent blue. If your bead is black, you used too much cobalt chloride. You can repeat the process using more borax/less cobalt chloride. The blue color is characteristic of the metal ion used to produce the bead, which was cobalt. More Colored Jewels Try using other metal salts to produce colored beads: copper sulfate - copper - blue greenferric ammonium sulfate - iron - yellow or golden brownmanganese salts - violetnickel salts - brownchromium salts - light green Learn More Bead Test to Identify Metals

The Victorian Period Was a Time of Change

The Victorian Period Was a Time of Change The Victorian Period revolves around the political career of Queen Victoria. She was crowned in 1837 and died in 1901 (which put a definite end to her political career). A great deal of change took place during this periodbrought about because of the Industrial Revolution; so its not surprising that the literature of the period is often concerned with social reform. As Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) wrote, The time for levity, insincerity, and idle babble and play-acting, in all kinds, is gone by; it is a serious, grave time. Of course, in the literature from this period, we see a duality, or double standard, between the concerns of the individual (the exploitation and corruption both at home and abroad) and national success - in what is often referred to as the Victorian Compromise. In reference to Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold, E. D. H. Johnson argues: Their writings... locate the centers of authority not in the existing social order but within the resources of individual being. Against the backdrop of technological, political, and socioeconomic change, the Victorian Period was bound to be a volatile time, even without the added complications of the religious and institutional challenges brought by Charles Darwin and other thinkers, writers, and doers. Consider this quote from Victorian author Oscar Wilde in his preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray as an example of one of the central conflicts of the literature of his era. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their own peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their own peril. Victorian Period: Early Late The Period is often divided into two parts: the early Victorian Period (ending around 1870) and the late Victorian Period. Writers associated with the early period are: Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), Robert Browning (1812–1889), Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861), Emily Bronte (1818–1848), Matthew Arnold (1822–1888), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882), Christina Rossetti (1830–1894), George Eliot (1819–1880), Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) and Charles Dickens (1812–1870). Writers associated with the late Victorian Period include George Meredith (1828–1909), Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889), Oscar Wilde (1856–1900), Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), A.E. Housman (1859–1936), and Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894). While Tennyson and Browning represented pillars in Victorian poetry, Dickens and Eliot contributed to the development of the English novel. Perhaps the most quintessentially Victorian poetic works of the period are: Tennysons In Memorium (1850), which mourns the loss of his friend. Henry James describes Eliots Middlemarch (1872) as organized, molded, balanced composition, gratifying the reader with the sense of design and construction. It was a time of change, a time of great upheaval, but also a time of GREAT literature!