Hopper crystal

Today, Hopper crystal is a topic of great relevance and interest in today's society. More and more people are getting involved and concerned about Hopper crystal, looking for information, opinions and advice about it. In this article, we will explore the topic of Hopper crystal in depth, analyzing its different facets and offering a comprehensive approach that allows readers to better understand its importance and implications. From its origin to its impact today, Hopper crystal is a topic that leaves no one indifferent, and through this article we hope to provide a broad and detailed vision that helps enrich the knowledge and understanding of this topic.

A possibly synthetic bismuth hopper crystal
A photo of synthetic bismuth
A Synthetic bismuth hopper crystal
Hoppered galena

A hopper crystal is a form of crystal, the shape of which resembles that of a pyramidal hopper container.

The edges of hopper crystals are fully developed, but the interior spaces are not filled in. This results in what appears to be a hollowed out step lattice formation, as if someone had removed interior sections of the individual crystals. In fact, the "removed" sections never filled in, because the crystal was growing so rapidly that there was not enough time (or material) to fill in the gaps. The interior edges of a hopper crystal still show the crystal form characteristic to the specific mineral, and so appear to be a series of smaller and smaller stepped down miniature versions of the original crystal.[1][2]

Hoppering occurs when electrical attraction is higher along the edges of the crystal; this causes faster growth at the edges than near the face centers. This attraction draws the mineral molecules more strongly than the interior sections of the crystal, thus the edges develop more quickly. However, the basic physics of this type of growth is the same as that of dendrites but, because the anisotropy in the solid–liquid inter-facial energy is so large, the dendrite so produced exhibits a faceted morphology.

Hoppering is common in many minerals, including lab-grown bismuth, galena, quartz (called skeletal or fenster crystals), gold, calcite, halite (salt), and water (ice).

In 2017, Frito-Lay filed for (and later received) a patent[3] for a salt cube hopper crystal. Because the shape increases surface area to volume, it allows people to taste more salt compared to the amount actually consumed.

References

  1. ^ "Solidification and Crystallization Processing in Metals and Alloys". Google Books.
  2. ^ "What is Hopper Crystal". Geology In.
  3. ^ US 10881123