Script Unit 1.
Welcome to Unit 1.1!
In this very first unit, we will try to get an idea of what is actually meant by crystal structure. We
want to see how large or small crystalline objects can be, this means: which [length] scales do
we consider, if we want to explore crystals and structures
For this, let’s have a look on the following slide. It is based on a famous short film from the year
1977, which is called “Powers of Ten”.
This short film shows nicely how large or small different objects of scientific investigations are.
We do not want to go through all of these now, but let’s have a look on a few of them.
Here at the top left corner it starts with the largest galactic object, the Milky Way with a diameter
of 100.000 light years;
Interestingly, also the universe has a structure, in fact a very heterogeneous one - there are
areas which are very condensed - there are for instance these super globular clusters - and on
the other side there are huge areas which are almost empty - this is clearly the domain of
astrophysics, so let’s switch back…
We go down to the planet earth and come to this house, approximately 10 m in size. Are there
crystals which are as large as houses?
This is indeed the case! Look at this spectacular picture: Here you see a researcher in this
crystal-cave exploring one of these huge crystal columns, which are made of selenite, which is
Calcium Sulfate.
This crystal cave is located in Mexico, at the mine of Naica. It is a side cave of this mine, which
was only discovered very recently by accident, and now it has the beautiful name “cueva de los
cristales”.
Being a researcher there is actually quite uncomfortable: drastic conditions with temperatures
around 50 degree Celsius and a relative humidity of almost 100 %. This is also the reason why
the expedition team members have to wear special cooling suits… The exploration of this cave
is a story in itself and you can find a quite interesting article about it in the Magazine National
Geographic as Additional Material to this unit.
Apparently, the conditions in this cave must have been relatively constant over a very long
period of time, allowing these extreme large crystals to grow. The age of the largest crystals,
which are approx. 14 meters long, is estimated as 100.000 to one million years.
Let’s switch back to the overview - if we go further down on these length scales we come to a
region between a football and a lady bird -
This is the typical size of exhibition objects that you can find in science museums etc. Here we
see a greenish fluorite crystal (which is calcium fluoride), normally colorless and transparent,
here greenish due to certain impurities
And this fluorite crystal is framed by agglomerations of smaller calcite crystals (which is calcium
carbonate) - this object is 5 centimeters in size…
Let’s switch back again and go further down the scale - then we reach a dimension of the
thickness of a sheet of paper, a tenth of a millimeter - and this is the typical size of single-
crystals in research.
Here you see a nice blue sparkling crystal of a so-called metal organic framework. It is placed
here on such a nylon loop because it is being prepared for a X-ray experiment in order to solve
the structure of this specimen - we will come back to the class of metal-organic frameworks in
one of the following chapters…
Once again back to the overview: In order to describe the outer shapes of crystals, the
morphology, we are in this region of length scales, but crystals do have also an inner structure:
And in order to explore this inner structure we have to go down several orders of magnitude till
we reach the dimensions of molecules or atoms - atoms or molecules are the constituents of
crystals, which are arranged in a certain manner that we will explore very soon in this course…
We could go still further down on this scale and would reach sub-atomic sizes and structures.
Atoms also have a substructure as do the constituents of atomic nuclei, the protons and
neutrons. But this is clearly the area of high-energy physics which we will not address in our
course.
To summarize this unit: If we look at the inner structure of crystals then we are in the region
between 10 to the power of minus ten meters, the chemist says also 1 Å, and a few
nanometers, and if we want to describe the outer dimensions of crystals we are in this region
between a sheet of paper and a football with the exception of the giant crystals in the mine of
Naica.
