Early 70’s kids… My buddy was a Quisp fan – I tilted more towards Lucky Charms.
The toys were great – I think that my favorite ones were from Freakies.
I recall always fishing around with my grubby little hands to find the toy whenever a new box was opened.
Dang. I came here to say:
Freakies > Quisp
Just to see if anyone would get the reference. :-/
I would think that “compressed smog” would be fairly indistinguishable from what you’d get by merely scraping the accumulated grime off a conveniently exposed surface over a short period of time.
OTOH, as the grime is fairly carbon-rich (thank you, diesel exhaust), if you compress it enough, whether statically or with a shock wave, you can get nanodiamonds.
Temperature might not be optimal for wearing but if the smog ring had iodine crystals that would sublimate and recrystalize it would be cool.
There could be several variants of this.
Sublimation and crystallization, when we have a suitable material in suitable atmosphere. (Enclosure would even allow air-unstable materials in inert atmosphere.)
Melting-solidifying crystallization, with e.g. bismuth.
Or dissolution-crystallization with a combo of suitable material with a suitable solvent.
The temperature chosen for the reaction then depends on if it should react to being placed on a finger (and in which ambient temperature), or if the crystals should be changeable by immersion in hot water or in a cigarette lighter flame.
The mood ring, with its thermochromic liquid crystals, is an example of another approach to the environmentally reacting jewellery.
Now, the question is how to make technically doable and sufficiently pwetty…
Not quite as cool as the Quisp one – my wife got me a meteorite ring for our anniversary:
Beautiful! How it is etched? Nital? Or something more special? Does the exposed structure tend to wear, or is it sufficiently proteced by the raised edges?
You may also check the tungsten carbide rings. Beautiful material. Does not scratch at all in any sort of regular use.
The meteorite has worn well (the ring is titanium). I’m not sure how the meteorite was processed. The actual ring that she got me has a band of dinosaur fossil and a band of meteorite. The fossil did not do as well – a piece fell out (which reminds me that I need to see if the guy can repair it before my wife sees it). Under normal use I’m sure that it would do fine – I think that I damaged it while planting some trees.
Love the tungsten rings.
Generally, rings made from meteorites are cut out from a slab in 1 piece and polished. The etch you see is the Widmanstatten pattern, the actual crystal structure of the meteorite formed over eons of cooling. Nitric acid is often used to etch the meteorite and bring out the pattern. Meteorites are usually fairly resilient, especially the iron ones used for rings, but it looks like they have given it a bit more protection by putting it in a titanium shell.
They don’t? That really is disappointing. However having recently made my annual purchase of a box of Boo Berry cereal I am happy to report that everyone’s favorite cereal ghost no longer has that weird mouth flap.
Damn, those Quisp rings. As a kid, I was convinced that if I got one for every finger, I’d have superpowers, like the old Iron Man villain, the Mandarin. (The comic book version, not the movie version.) Unfortunately, most of the people in our house hated Quisp. (It didn’t help that I was the sort of kid who would open a box of cereal in the supermarket, before Mom even got to the checkout, and then try to sneak it back on the shelf if it didn’t have the prize that I wanted.)
You should’ve aimed for xray vision first.
I might’ve, if I had realized that they were good for more than looking at women in plastic raincoats.
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