Congratulations to Hannah Dixon of Year 10 for winning the Senior Division of “Artistic Photo” for the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, Victorian Branch for the The Art and Science of Crystal Growing Competition.
Many chemical compounds exist in the form of crystals, like table salt or sugar. Sometimes crystals are very small (microscopic in size) and sometimes they can be quite large. People who study crystals in lots of detail are called crystallographers. But you don’t need to be a crystallographer to appreciate the beauty of crystals and to be fascinated by watching them grow.
The aim of “The Art and Science of Crystal Growing” competition is to encourage school children to take an interest in how crystals form and how attractive they can appear.
Students in our Year 10 Chemistry class grew a crystal from solution, they took measurements whilst the crystal formed over a period of up to 10 weeks, and provided photographic evidence of their experiment (up to 5 photos during the course of 10 weeks showing how the crystal grows over time). At the end of the experiment, students were able to use their own imaginations to create an artistic picture of their crystal.
