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Chai and Why?
The Colour of Gemstones - Beauty in imperfection
Charu Seth and Sayani Das
TIFR
Sunday, Aug. 17, 2014
11:00 am
Room 2 Sc
Ruparel College
We have adorned ourselves with jewellery since antiquity; cut and polished minerals of different colours have been valued as gemstones. Most gems are crystals which get their colour from trace amounts of impurities, usually transition-metal ions. For e.g. aluminium oxide, as corundum or alumina is colourless, but replace a tiny bit of aluminium by chromium and you have a red ruby, while iron or titanium produces a blue/green sapphire! Let’s look at the chemistry responsible for beauty in imperfection
We'll also have some cool experiments to show how metal ions give colour to crystals!
Children and adults of all ages welcome! Entry free!
About the speakers:
Charu and Sayani are research scholars in the Dept. of Chemical Sciences at TIFR working in Materials Chemistry and Chemical Biology, respectively.
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