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Asked by crouchingmurloc to Ben, Dave, Ed, Sam, Susana on 17 Jun 2013.
Question: What is your favorite type of crystal to look at?
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Ed Lowe answered on 17 Jun 2013:
It depends a little on what you mean – some crystals are beautiful to look at in their own right, take a look at any picture of a geode to see what I mean by that!
But if you mean what sort of crystal would I most like to look at using X-rays, that would be one made up of a really exciting protein – at the moment I’m trying to look at proteins that allow the parasites that cause malaria to infect our blood cells. Figuring out how that works – and how to stop it – would be amazing.
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Sam Horrell answered on 17 Jun 2013:
I work on a protein called nitrite reductase, its bright green and forms crystals in the shape of little pyramids. It looks pretty cool, but there are so many interesting looking crystals its tough to just pick one. (There are some pictures on my profile of different crystals). In the end what is important is what’s inside the crystal, that’s where the intersting biology is.
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David Briggs answered on 17 Jun 2013:
Any crystals that I have made!
Some crystals have a property called “birefringence” – which means when you look at them using certain filters on the microscope (polarised – like sunglasses) – they can seem to “glow” and can look absolutely beautiful!
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Susana Teixeira answered on 18 Jun 2013:
The large ones! Seems a bit silly but I need to use both the synchrotron (X-rays) and nuclear reactor (for neutrons) to look at my crystals. Unfortunately neutrons are hard to get and to get good data I need fairly large crystals.
If you are asking which ones I find prettiest though, it is the ones that are most perfect: nice well defined shape, sharp edges, preferably lots of color (like the ones on my profile). I’m always amazed that something so beautiful can come out at the end of so many steps and tests and worries!
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