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.

You might have seen sped-up videos of how some crystals form. Maybe you did the famous experiment of putting a metal ring in ...

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 ...

Starfish embryos sprout appendages very early on in development, and the embryos can spin through water by moving those appendages. Researchers have now found that when a bunch of starfish embryos are ...

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 ...

Researchers have successfully grown platinum crystals in liquid metal, using a powerful X-ray technique giving rare insight into how these delicate crystals form and grow.

Crystals don't always grow the way we thought. A team of researchers has just discovered a new type of crystal that shatters preconceived ideas about how they form. Scientists from New York University ...

Snow. It's made up of tiny ice crystals that can transform into a variety of intricate symmetrical patterns forming a beautiful snowflake. Have you ever wondered how snowflakes form? Did you know ...

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 ...

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 ...