Crystals are a Researcher’s Best Friend

The sparkle and allure of that perfect, shiny crystal…no one appreciates it as much as a – researcher?  It may sound hard to believe, but many researchers spend years trying to create a perfect crystal.  No, it isn’t because they are competing with the jewellery industry.  These researchers call themselves crystallographers and their goal is to find the ideal conditions in which to grow beautiful, tiny crystals out of different small molecules.  Remember when you were a kid and grew sugar crystals on a string suspended in a mixture of melted sugar water?  Well, it’s the same idea, but on a smaller scale.

So what do researchers do once they’ve created a flawless crystal smaller than the width of an eyelash?  Obviously, the sensible thing to do is to blast it with X-rays.  Sure, it sounds a bit odd, but aside from the entertainment value, analyzing the pattern made from bouncing these beams off of a crystal provides useful information.  Different molecules (or combinations of them) grow into crystals that give a unique pattern when X-rays are shot at them (similar to our one-of-a-kind fingerprints).  This gives researchers lots of valuable insight into what molecules look like, and even how they interact with each other.  For instance, scientists can determine how a drug works by “seeing” where it binds to a target.  Some scientists have even used this method to figure out how the cells in our body function.

So, although these crystals may not qualify as “bling”, they still sparkle and have the ability to inspire awe.

To read more about crystallography research which won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, click here.

Below is a collage of microscope images taken of crystals grown in a research lab: