Final of the Concurso de Cristalización en la Escuela

The headquarters of the Spanish National Research Council in Madrid will host the final of the Crystallization Competition in the School on Saturday, 10th May. The best 40 crystallization projects selected from the semifinals throughout all Spain will gather at this Crystallography Fair which aims to encourage scientific vocations and make known the fascinating world of crystals and their applications. 

40 teams, 120 students and 40 secondary school teachers from all Spain will participate in the Final of the Crystallization Competition in the School.

  • The Final is open to the general public and will take place at the headquarters of CSIC at Serrano Street on Saturday the 10th of May.
  • This year's competition is one of the activities of the International Year of Crystallography (IYCr2014) and has generated enormous interest within the educational community with the participation of over 7,000 students from all over Spain. 
  • The Final will be attended by the President of the International Union of Crystallography, Prof. Gautam Desiraju, and the President of the Spanish National Research Council, Prof. Emilio Lora-Tamayo.

The Crystallization Competition in the School in Spain is organized by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the Specialized Spanish Group of Crystallography and Crystal Growth (GE3C), and funded by the Spanish Foundation of Science and Technology (FECYT), among other sponsors.

This national edition of the competition is one the activities of the International Year of Crystallography and has generated enormous interest within the educational community with the participation of over 7,000 students, 286 teachers and 189 schools. It has been organised with the support of the Universities of Zaragoza, Granada, Barcelona, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Rovira i Virgili, Complutense of Madrid, Jaime I of Castellón, Alcalá de Henares , Oviedo and La Laguna in Tenerife, as well as the City of Arts and Sciences of Valencia.

During April, the best 40 crystallization projects from all over Spain have been selected from eight semifinals that took place in Andalusia, Aragon, Catalonia, Asturias-Galicia-Cantabria, Valencia, Canarias, Madrid and Alcalá de Henares.

The crystallization projects will be evaluated by a panel of renowned researchers and representatives of scientific associations, including the European Crystallographic Association, the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry, the Spanish Society of Mineralogy, the Spanish Society of Clays, the Spanish Group of Crystallography, the Spanish National Committee Crystallography, the Spanish Association of Teachers of Earth Sciences and the College of Chemists of Puerto Rico.

The award ceremony will be held at 14.00 am at the Auditorium of CSIC’s headquarters and it will be attended by the President of CSIC, Prof. Emilio Lora-Tamayo and the President of the International Union of Crystallography, Prof. Gautam Desiraju, among other authorities.

These photographs from the 2013 Competition demonstrate how young students learn crystallization and crystallography. They learn to perform experiments and to analyze experimental results, and how to defend their results in a scientific atmosphere. They also learn how to write a laboratory notebook and how to present their results attractively. They gain experience in discussing science, and they are also taught to compete fairly and to learn from other teams.

The main objective of the Crystallization Competition in the School (http://www.lec.csic.es/concurso/) is to introduce the importance of crystallography and its applications among secondary schools by taking advantage of the natural attraction of the crystallization phenomenon. The design of the competition, which begins with crystallization and crystallography courses for school teachers, allows students to learn how to work as scientists in the lab, to enjoy scientific teamwork and present their results as researchers would do in a scientific conference.

Each team of students will present a selection of their best crystallizations together with a poster using a scientific layout and the laboratory notebook with details of the work plan and results obtained.

This is the sixth edition of this popular science competition that has been organised in Spain since this activity was first organised and promoted by the Laboratory for Crystallographic Studies (CSIC-Granada) in the 2009/2010 academic year. The successful design of the Crystallization Competition in the School has been a source of inspiration to develop similar initiatives in other countries.

For additional information:

Regional information:

Juan Manuel Garcia Ruiz

Contact: iycr2014@iucr.org facebook Site map © IUCr