Crystallography matters ... more!

Many initiatives have been and are being organized to involve schoolchildren at Mudaliarpet, Pondicherry (India) into crystallography on the occasion of IYCr2014.

1. At first, the students were given a brief introduction on various crystals, which made them think about how crystals are formed.

2. Following this, a team of students were selected for a project on Crystal Growth - investigating the size, shape and number of crystals formed, taking various substances such as table salt, sugar, epsom salt, borax, potassium nitrate and alum. 

3. A Radio Talk was given by the teacher and the students on the "International Year of Crystallography".

4. A lecture was given on the topic to the school students, following which a demonstration -cum- exhibition, along with a poster presentation by the teacher is to be arranged for view for the public around the school locale. 

5. A next attempt to telecast the above in the television is made.

6. Students of our school are participating in the IYCr2014 Crystal Growing Competition. 

Eine neue Kluft im Steinbruch Eibenstein lieferte beachtliche Kalzitkristalle, z.T. Phantombildungen und Kalzite in Chalcedon.

Aus Motlas O.Ö. wurden herrliche Quarz-Stufen, Andalusit, Beryll, Schörl und Orthoklas angekauft.

In der Mittelvitrine werden aus der Studiensammlung des Museum besondere Stufen ausgestellt: Einzel-Quarzkristalle und Stufen (auch Amethyst), sowie seltene Mineralien wie Amstallit, bzw. aus dem Fundort Kottaun; ferner Beryll, Chalcedon, Schörl u.a.

Ebenso wurde der größte Feldspatkristall Österreichs aus Wanzenau bei Rosenburg dem Krahuletz-Museum übergeben und ist dort im Rahmen der Mineralien-Dauerausstellung zu sehen.

The opening is scheduled on June 23rd, with the presence of Professor Robert Huber, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry. The results of the Photo Contest will be announced.

The Australian satellite of the IYCr2014 photo competition Crystallography in Everyday Life saw Crystal 29 conference delegates select their favorite images from more than 130 entries submitted world-wide.

The 15 stunning images celebrate the wonder of crystallography, symmetry and crystals as symbolized in the places, objects and experiences of everyday life and will now form part of the traveling exhibition around Australia.

Graziano Lolli from Italy won the first prize in this category with a photo of "romanesco broccoli".

El Museo de Historia Natural "Dr. Carlos A. Torres de la Llosa" de Montevideo, Uruguay ha realizado una exhibición especial de Cristales y Estructuras Cristalinas aprovechando su colección de minerales para celebrar el Año Internacional de la Cristalografía 2014. En la exposición se agregan a los minerales algunas figuras con las estructuras atómicas correspondientes.

----

The Natural History Museum "Dr. Carlos A. Torres de la Llosa" of Montevideo, Uruguay has created a special exhibit of Crystals and Crystal structures using its own minerals collection to celebrate the International Year of Crystallography 2014. The exposition contains some figures with the atomic structures of the selected minerals.

- Man, crystal, pearl and coral: myths and symbols

- King, Prince and Bishop: gems in majesty

- the science of gems

Many events will be organized around the exhibition: concerts, conferences, demonstrations, ...

More information at http://www.aicr2014.fr and http://www.musee-saint-antoine.fr

The follow-up event to the exhibition Tiles, Weaves and Origami: A Journey through Art and Crystallography.

http://www.iycr2014.org/events/exhibitions/tiles,-weaves-and-origami-a-journey-through-art-and-crystallography

As part of its celebration of Science Month in Philippine Schools, the High School Department of Visayan Nazarene Bible College brings you Journey Into the Crystal CEBU, the Philippine staging of the traveling exhibition Voyage dans le cristal.

http://www.iycr2014.org/home/ongoing/special-voyage/special/voyage-dans-le-cristal

Travel through time and discover the fascinating world of crystals!

The exhibition is open for public viewing at the Main Lobby of Visayan Nazarene Bible College, St. Mary's Drive, Apas, Cebu City.

The exhibition will open on May 9th with a speech by Sven Lidin, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at Lund University and Chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.

The exhibition "Living with crystal" (original title in Slovenian: Živeti s kristali), organized on the occasion of the International Year of Crystallography, will be open from 13 February 2014 to 11 January 2015 at the Slovenian Museum of Natural History, Ljubljana. 

On display: Photographs of minerals, Crystal drawings, Mineral and crystal collections, Jewellery, Fluorescent minerals, Interactive presentation of minerals and rocks on Biedermeier tables, Interactive play "Umek the Mineralogist", Microscopic world of crystals.

Authors: Miha Jeršek, Mirjan Žorž, Breda Činč Juhant, Katarina Fuchs

To celebrate the International Year of Crystallography, the joint Congress of the Italian Society of Mineralogy and Petrology and the Italian Geological Society (Milan, 10-12 September 2014) will feature a plenary lecture on 'One hundred years of mineral crystal chemistry' by Prof Stefano Merlino (U. Pisa).

Abstract of the lecture

After the epochal experience of Friedrich and Knipping suggested and interpreted by Laue, the scene rapidly moved to England where the young Bragg correctly explained the results of the Munich discovery and showed how to use X-rays to determine the arrangement of atoms in crystals and, in few years, actually derived the structures of several inorganic compounds. Their comparison permitted Bragg to assert that crystals are composed of ‘‘inelastic spheres in contact’’ and that ‘‘it is possible to assign to the sphere representing an atom… a constant diameter.’’ The development of these concepts by various authors (Wasastjerna, Goldschmidt, …) led to the well-known Table of ionic radii by Pauling, who - at the same time - proposed the rules for the stability of ionic compounds, based on the concept of coordination polyhedra as building elementary modules of inorganic compounds. The stability rules of Pauling, as well as the conception, formulated by Bragg, of the structures of complex oxides as characterized by ‘close packing’ of oxygen anions, were the main guiding lines in the ‘trial and error’ procedures to determine the atomic arrangements in minerals and in inorganic compounds in general. The increasing number of known structures raised the need for proper classification schemes, largely based on elementary structural units (as the silicon tetrahedra in silicates) and the various ways of their connection. At the same time the wide basis of structural data and the increased precision and accuracy of those data stimulated the revision of the old compilations of ionic radii as well as a re-formulation of the Pauling’s rule of valence-bond balance. Examples are presented of the application of the crystal chemical concepts to some important mineralogical, geochemical and geophysical problems. An explosive growth of structural knowledge in the last decades of the twentieth century was stimulated by the new techniques of data collection, the high speed of computing and the advent of direct methods of structure solution, which resulted not only in an enormous increase in the number of known structures, but also in unraveling very complex arrangements. This increasing structural knowledge accompanied and stimulated the development of a new way to look at the arrangements of inorganic compounds, based on their modular aspects. The concept of assembling different, geometrically compatible modules, mainly structural layers, to build up complex structures has been very productive; in fact it not only consented a deep knowledge of the structural relationships inside wide families of natural and synthetic compounds, but also favored the solution of complex structural problems and permitted careful previsions of new possible structural arrangements. Few lines of future developments of the crystal chemical study of minerals are briefly presented and discussed: ‘synergy’ between mineralogists and material chemists; computational simulations of structural arrangements; new experimental approach through automated electron diffraction tomography.