Crystals are everywhere—from the quartz in a watch to the salt on your dinner table, and even the ice in a winter storm. To the naked eye, a crystal appears as a solid, often geometric chunk of material. But zoom in to the molecular level, and you’ll see something remarkable: a repeating, three-dimensional pattern called a crystal lattice.
Whether it’s a diamond forged in the Earth’s mantle or a snowflake falling from a cloud, every crystal tells the story of atoms finding their lowest-energy, most orderly home.