Sublimation

We learnt about sublimation while waiting waiting for crystals to form. We did not get to do a practical on sublimation but we saw a demonstration of the process.

Sublimation is used to separate a substance that sublimes from one that does not and has a high melting point. For the demonstration, the substance that sublimed was iodine. See the purplish vapour? That's the gaseous state of iodine. My classmates are photobombing over here.

Iodine subliming

I managed to catch sight of the flask being removed from the evaporating dish briefly but I could not take a picture because it was too quick. When the flask was removed, there was a beautiful purple "cloud" from the bottom of the flask. Felt really mysterious. :o 

I find sublimation really cool because you don't usually see something skip the liquid state. And as you can see from the picture, we all forgot to wear our safety goggles. (How could we?!) We must keep that in mind next time!