Karl Gaff

Branching Creatine, 2018

Photomicrograph
Olympus BX51 DIC microscope; capture magnification ~x150

Dublin, Ireland

Here we see a close-up of creatine crystals. Initially forming a heterogeneous mixture, solute particles consisting of creatine crystals were suspended in a bulk solvent of water. The crystals, jittering about in the molecular storm of Brownian motion, undergo random walks, colliding and sticking to other crystals like tiny magnets. Over time, these clusters grow in size, eventually forming the branched fractal structure seen here, called a Brownian tree.