The effect is similar to how players in the popular digital game Tetris rotate, align and translate pieces to form a solid plane of uniform blocks. In the game, players rotate a piece so it lines up ...

Silicon dioxide, or silica, is one of Earth’s most common chemical compounds. It makes up more than 60 percent of the planet’s crust. The substance is also one of nature’s most diverse. Its atoms ...

New findings have implications for questions regarding how animals and plants grow minerals into shapes that have no relation to their original crystal symmetry, and why some contaminants are ...

An international research team involving scientists from the University of Vienna, the Faculty of Physics of the University of Warsaw and Univeristy of Edinburgh has described the process of growing ...

Minerals are geologic time capsules of the environments in which they form. With the right approach, their mysteries can be cracked open to reveal key features of the ancient Earth or other planets.

Exactly how a crystal forms from solution is a problem that has occupied scientists for decades. Researchers are now presenting the missing piece. Exactly how a crystal forms from solution is a ...