Crystals – Order Inside Solids

Podcast: Talking Science · Stavros kinnas

Opublikowano: 2026-08-18

Tip a little table salt onto a dark plate and look closely, with a magnifying glass if you have one, and you'll find that every single grain is a tiny, near-perfect cube, formed with no human hand shaping it at all. This episode explores why solids sometimes arrange themselves this precisely, what a crystal lattice actually is, how crystals grow from solution and from molten rock, how shining X-rays through a crystal revealed the structure of DNA itself, why a thin slice of quartz can keep remarkably accurate time, why every snowflake is six-sided yet genuinely unique, and why "...