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.

In exploring how crystals form, the researchers also came across an unusual, rod-shaped crystal that hadn’t been identified before, naming it “Zangenite” for the NYU graduate student who discovered it ...

A crystals expert has published an answer to how crystals are formed and how molecules become a part of them, solving an age-old mystery about crystal formation. A million years ago, the oldest known ...

Peter Vekilov, University of Houston Frank Worley Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, has published that incorporation of molecules into crystals occurs in two steps, divided by an ...

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 ...

If you dissolve sugar in hot water and then cool it down, you'll see pure sugar crystals form while impurities stay in the liquid. You can even watch the beautiful sugar crystals slowly grow in the ...

Crystals can do all sorts of things, some more useful than others. They can separate the gullible from their money in New Age healing shops. But they can also serve as the light-harvesting layer in a ...

More than 4 billion years ago, when the solar system was still young and the Earth was still growing, scientists think that a giant object the size of Mars crashed into the Earth. The biggest piece ...

Some parts of the U.S. see well over 100 inches (2.5 meters) of snow per year. Edoardo Frola/Moment Open via Getty Images The thought of snow can conjure up images of powdery slopes, days out of ...