Hiya,

Yesterday I accidentally broke a metamizole sodium ampoule and left it on a wooden shelf. The next morning I saw that the ampoule cap which I left on said wooden shelf had formed very peculiar, white, flaky but hard to the touch granules as seen on the attached pic.

There is some granular white residue on the bottom part of the ampoule where the liquid had evaporated, as well as wherever the liquid had fallen below (some glass dishes and plastic). None of them had that clearly defined granular pattern that was where the top part of the ampoule was touching the shelf though, and that made me wonder why that happened.

Was it some sort of reaction between the m.s. and the lacquer/paint on the shelf? Or maybe something else?

It'd be cool if some of the more chemically savvy folks out here explain to a chemistry noob like me why that cool reaction happens.

Thanks a lot! Peace & Love

Beautiful, it appears to me that it simply crystallized as the water evaporated

So it disobeyed gravity and crystallized upwards?

ye it do be like that.
The solutions get soaked up in the crystals and then evaporates on top. This is just a normal thing. For me it even happened in a crazier way because i had a solution in a jar and it just somehow forced itself through the cap to make a big crystal.

The phenomenom is called salt creep. And especially people with salt water aquariums have this problem.

https://www.instructable...al-From-Calcium-Acetate/

One can also use this phenomenon to make fake minerals.

The crystals themselves draw the solution upwards through capillary action so the apparent defiance of gravity is powered by thermal energy from the atmosphere.

I've observed a similar effect when crystallising calcium acetate. It basically climbs out of the crystallisation dish and the crystals have to be pushed back down again with a spatula in order to avoid messy losses.