Crystals in the community and the classroom.

J Appl Crystallogr

Diamond Light Source, Harwell Science Campus, Didcot OX11 0DE, United Kingdom.

Published: February 2024

The growing pressure on school curricula has meant crystals and the science of crystallography have been cut from or made optional for many educational programs. This omission is a serious disservice to the history and understanding of modern sciences, given that crystallography underpins many of the greatest advancements in science over the past century, is a critical component of many modern research papers and patents, and has 29 Nobel Prizes awarded in the field. This contribution describes a simple activity to target classroom and public engagement with crystallography, using marshmallows or equivalent sweets/candy to represent atoms and cocktail sticks to represent bonds, together with examples of how crystals are studied and how they are useful. Though it has a simple basis, this activity can be extended in numerous ways to reflect the aims of the demonstrator, and a few of these are described.

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10840310PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1107/S1600576724000207DOI Listing

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