What Is a Crystal?

For starters, a crystal is a mineral which is not saying much because minerals make up the earth,the moon, and meteorites that voyage to earth from other parts of the solar system.

Now that you got to know the "family" that crystals belongs to called minerals, lets get started with the basic facts of crystals. There are 88 naturally occurring elements of crystals that are made of atoms of different sizes and properties that combine in many different ways to form crystals. The huge range of temperatures and pressures within the earth contributes to crystals diversity, but the variety is not endless certain shapes or variations occur again and again.

The rules for being a crystal:

All crystals must be built out of atoms, atoms are built out protons, neutrons and electrons and form everything known to man.

All crystals are formed by a repeated pattern of molecules connecting together. In some solids, the arrangements of the building blocks (atoms and molecules) can be random or very different. In crystals, however, a collection of atoms is repeated in exactly the same arrangement over and over throughout the entire material, this structure is called a crystalline structure (thats what gives crystals their geometric appearance).

Did you,

when growing, all lab-made crystals separate all of their molecules into the water and let them naturally form into their former shape of crystal, so when the water evaporates the mineral is left behind.

All crystals must be solid, when something is solid because the particles that make up a solid are packed so tightly together it means that it cannot move very freely.


Now that you know some of the things a crystal is lets find out what a crystal isn't

A crystal does not have a indefinite chemical composition.

A crystal is not anything transparent that has a geometric structure.

And finally a crystal is not a banana split covered in Hershey's chocolate syrup.

I hope you at least earned one thing from this short explanatory paragraph, bye for now.