Crystal-A-Con

Diamond crystal structure model with woman sitting in front

Crystal-A-Con was a 2 day pop-up science festival hosted as part of the International Union of Crystallography 2023 conference in Melbourne, Australia. Our free, interactive festival attracted over 400 school students and families, with plenty to see and do for all science lovers.

UAb6F9r3
3uHmfBY0
Lolly crystal structures
Stage with IUCr 2023 in big letters and man standing in front of lectern
Einstein tiles in yellow, red,blue and grey on paper
3 m tall buckyball
mjthoLpX
Prof. Jenny Martin on stage in front of a picture of crystals
Origami zika virus
5 people in matching t-shirts

7 Awesome Activities

Did you know there are seven types of building blocks for all crystals? We’re using those as our inspiration for our activities.

Cubic

Cubic
Help build our giant diamond crystal structure

Make your own crystal

Hexagonal
Make your own crystal model to take home (or to eat!)

Connection to culture

Trigonal
Patterns from around the world

Tetragonal

Tetragonal
Light and Colour with ANSTO
(our nuclear science agency)

Orthorhobic

Orthorhombic
Play a crystal detective with our friends from the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre

Monoclinic

Monoclinic
Build your own biomolecule - origami and more with our friends at the Protein Data Bank

Triclinic

Triclinic
Meet real life crystallographer scientists.
Ask them your anything or find out what their favourite crystals are and why.

Lots of Exciting Exhibitions

As well as our interactive exhibits, there was lots else to explore – including:

byp_10_winners

Pattern Competition Winners

STEM and Needles

STEM and Needles with Irene Suarez-Martinez

large crystal structures

Giant Crystal Structures

FAQ's

Crystallography is a way of working out the shape of things that are too small to be seen, such as atoms. Atoms are the smallest building blocks of everything. Crystallography can tell us how atoms line up and how they make all the materials around the world that surround us every day.

Crystallography is like taking a normal x-ray photo except you don’t see the bones inside a person, you see the tiny little atoms and molecules inside a crystal.

Watch how these crystallographers explain what crystallography is and what they do:

 

Play Video
Play Video

It can be hard to wrap your head around the definition of what Crystallography is to some, but it’s a really important science and one with lots of connections to Australia. Some of us adults don’t really get it either so imagine explaining this to your students.

This is what Crystal–A-Con was for.

See more of our video resources here.

 

Bragg Your Pattern is an outreach initiative by a small group of Australian scientists responsible for organising the 26th Congress and General Assembly of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr 2023).

The purpose is to inspire and provide educational resources and experiences to students and teachers as our way of celebrating and giving back to the community as a lasting legacy of the International Congress.