Structure of Stuff is Sweet

During National Science and Engineering Week March 2012, the YCG held an outreach event on Crystallography in Reading, in association with the Thames Valley Branch of the British Science Association. We lured local pubgoers with the promise of sweets in exchange for an evening of crystallographic entertainment. Many people took the chance to try their hands at the dark art of crystal growing, observing their very own lysozyme crystals growing under a microscope. Others took advantage of the diffraction gratings, lasers and slinkies to learn about waves and the fundamentals of diffraction. The construction of unit cells was particularly popular, with marshmallows, Toblerone and Malteasers as staple building materials (for scientific purposes of course!). We had more than 40 participants show up, and lots of interest from teachers who expressed interest in bringing the workshop into their classrooms. We have also had interest in hosting the event again in London in collaboration with Science London. We would like to thank the British Science Association Thames Valley branch for funding and for publicity. We feel it was a very successful event and would like to thank all of the volunteers for their hard work to make this possible.