• Question: how are funky cristals funky?

    Asked by rania to James, Marcus, Martin, Rob, Suzanne on 16 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by demilouise123.
    • Photo: Marcus Gallagher-Jones

      Marcus Gallagher-Jones answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      Well crystals do some very funky things with light. If you shine light on crystals you can get things called diffraction patterns. Each spot within this pattern is representative of an element of the crystal, it’s overall structure, the number of units that make up the crystal and even structures within those units. In biology crystals are regularly used to see the atomic structures of proteins. I think thats pretty cool.

    • Photo: Robert Thompson

      Robert Thompson answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      I think you might be referring to my profile saying I work on funky crystals. Marcus is right crystals do very funky things with light, which I love!

      The thing that makes my crystals funky is what I use them for, So I look at how I can excite them. I do this by shinning light on them. When they are excited they can do loads of different things on the very very tiny scale and after a while they get bored of doing it and chuck some light out again.

      I think they are pretty cool and funky.

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