Scientifically speaking, the term “crystal” refers to any solid that has an ordered chemical structure. This means that its parts are arranged in a precisely ordered pattern, like bricks in a wall.

Crystals -- from sugar and table salt to snowflakes and diamonds -- don't always grow in a straightforward way. Researchers have now captured this journey from amorphous blob to orderly structures. In ...

Christopher Voisey receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Minerals Research Institute of Western Australia. Humanity’s fascination with gold stretches back thousands of years.

A one-of-a-kind natural quartz now welcomes visitors to the natural history museum Abigail Eisenstadt The museum’s new natural quartz weighs a whopping 8,000 pounds. It was found in an Arkansas mine ...

Mesmerizing videos offer a new look at the ways crystals form. The real-time clips, described March 30 in Nature Nanotechnology, show closeup views of microscopic gold particles tumbling, sliding and ...

Crystals—from sugar and table salt to snowflakes and diamonds—don't always grow in a straightforward way. New York University researchers have captured this journey from amorphous blob to orderly ...