Where is the secrets of structure for Solving crystal maze report?”
CRYSTALS are objects of true and profound mystery. That’s not because they channel occult energies, or hold misty hints of the future in their limpid depths. Their puzzle is much less esoteric: why are they as they are? It is an incredibly basic question, yet physicists still struggle with it. Can we say why a given group of atoms prefers one particular arrangement over another? Can we predict how a crystal will be structured, and so deduce what properties it will have? By and large, the answer is an embarrassing no. Or at least it used to be, if Chris Pickard of University College London is right. He has developed a surprisingly simple way of predicting crystal structures. His technique, along with another that has just emerged, might finally show us the way through the crystal maze. There is more at stake here than the prettiness of some multifaceted amethyst. Crystals occur within most materials around us, be they metals, rocks or our own bones. Crystal structures determine crystal
