Crystalline Observations

As I return back to my room, I embrace my inner Meowth and swipe all of my loose pens and papers off the table. I gingerly set the crystal down as I rummage around for my spare testing equipment.

I, for one, am not high-strung about a possible Psychic attack. My pokémon sure aren't either since they've returned to relaxing, even if they do keep an eye on me and the experiment.

Now, my equipment is…limited. I can't possibly expect to carry around an entire lab in my pocket, so I really only have what's built into the Octillery Arms. It's only a little, but I can make do.

Now, scratching it with a variety of nails made from different materials, I think it's around a hardness of 6. The steel nail started to scratch it, but the knife wasn't able to.

When light is passed through the crystal, it obviously brightens slightly, but the light is only refracted a smidge. The opposite end of the crystal is still mostly white, though it tends towards blue.

No visible reaction in water, but I may look more into that later. Otherwise, I know it's denser than water. Maybe I can find some honey or molasses to test with next?

Less dense than honey. Thanks, Cecilia.

Using a high-voltage full bridge rectifier and some electrodes I slapped together, I found that the crystal acts as a conductor and can easily handle 230 Volts of DC power. Perhaps I can find some relation to piezoelectricity?

Does not react under stress.

I had removed the crystal from the rectifier, and the Octillery Arm that had picked it up reported 230 Volts of charge being dissipated. Does it mean that this crystal can hold charge like a battery or capacitor? If it's a capacitor, is it high-voltage, low-capacitance, or low-voltage, high-capacitance? Could the capacitance be high enough that 230V is actually low for it?

Okay. It's slightly difficult to measure the voltage limits, but it is easier to find capacitance. The time it takes for a capacitor to charge and discharge is five times the load of resistance in ohms times the capacitance in farads. That means that I can measure the seconds it takes for the voltage to drop to near zero then divide by five times resistance and get capacitance.

Unfortunately, the only spare resistor I have is a 1K Ω. I don't really feel like disassembling my arms for an experiment. Though—

Huh, the temperature is increasing…somewhat. Perhaps I can calculate the specific heat capacity?

Agh, that's the next thing to measure. The voltage is dropping almost imperceptibly, so I'm going to take the egg with me and go get some lunch or something. Need to ruminate on this egg.

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One hour and a pizza later, I've come back to find the crystal still in the charging station. It's not all lost, though, because using a little bit of calculus, I've found that the capacitance of the crystal is…

300,000 F. Yes, those are whole farads. Not micro. Therefore, under the current conditions, it would take about 47 years to charge this crystal.

That…is a larger capacitor than anything else I've ever seen.

I could use this to get a Ph.D., probably. I'm not 100% sure about the procedure. I could use this to fix the battery situation for my arms. I could…use this for a lot of things…and I still have more to discover. There's something about this crystal that I feel holds secrets that can expand the world beyond just what we know.

I…need to figure out how to grow more.

But…I also don't want to leave valuable research material here, nor do I want to destroy it in the event that attempting to grow it destroys the samples.

Well, I collect more if I need it. For now, I'll do the sensible thing and smash it with a hammer.

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I have reached a new peak of boredom.

I gave one crystal to Hazel, who quickly grew me a new seed, so that's always an option. However, this new seed is sure to contain impurities in it. Unless she evolved into a Ferrothorn, she won't have that capability.

So, I've stared at beakers full of different solutions for the last hour. First of all, this crystal dissolves and neutralizes acids, so that's a bust.

Conversely, the bases and sugars are having the ride of their lives.

Distilled water, as shown before, has had little progress. Sodium hydroxide had a violent exothermic reaction. Lithium hydroxide bubbles quite a bit and makes me fear for a similar result. Potassium hydroxide…nothing.

Now, different salt levels of water have yielded much more interesting results. The crystal has shown that it will increase at a rate of 0.001% of mass per 0.25 kg of salt added to 1L of water.

I could just throw this into the ocean and call it a day, but that doesn't lead towards a privatized application where I'm the main producer of these crystals. Also…it's just plain unsanitary. People pee in there!

I'll use the brine water for right now, but I'll continue my experiments on growing more crystals.

First, I need to upgrade my batteries.