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Is there such a thing as optically clear dry ice?

I thought it would be possible to get students to think about the difference between infra red light and heat by making a lens of water ice and using it as a burning glass. However, I wondered whether this would work if you made a lens of dry ice? I know that carbon dioxide absorbs strongly in the infra-red, so it would be a good way of demonstrating the link between carbon dioxide and global warming (although I guess nearly impossible to do in practice). All the dry ice I have been able to obtain for school is always pearly white.

Obviously there are other experiments I can do to demonstrate this using gaseous carbon dioxide.

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  • Asked by pkeestra
  • on 2010-07-13 06:56:40
  • Member status
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Categories: Planet Earth.

Tags: climatechange, CarbonDioxide.

 

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Jon-Richfield says:

If you wanted to clarify dry ice, you would have to put it under sufficient pressure to fuse all the crystals, much as one would need to put snow under controlled pressure to convert it into clear ice. Of course, it is tricky to get all the air inclusions out, but it is not impossible in principle. I have never seen it done with CO2, but in theory it could be made to work.

An alternative approach would be to cool pure, supercritical CO2 progressively till it crystallises around -56C. But it might be a bit tricky to avoid an optically noisy crystal structure.

I wonder... maybe crystallising CO2 under pressure from a solution in ether?

Sooner you than me!

Jon

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Tags: climatechange, CarbonDioxide.

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posted on 2010-07-13 20:33:55 | Report abuse


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