Crystal Explorers is a research-linked workshop created for the Edinburgh Science Festival, allowing young people to discover how crystals form, the influence of atom arrangement and how to grow their own sugar crystals at home. Everyone left the workshop with a goodie bag of resources to replicate the in-workshop experiment and we’re excited to hear how their crystals grow. The three 1 hour workshops were fully booked as part of the Edinburgh Science Festival offerings at the National Museum of Scotland, with 43 young people participating across the day. PhD students Annabel MacGregor and Emma Tomlinson developed the workshop with support from Dr Jenny Gracie (Widening Participation & Outreach Officer), and on the day Ben Spenceley (PhD student) was the fourth pair of hands helping the young scientists with their experiments. Through physical samples of crystals, atom models and role-playing the states of matter (solid, liquid and gases), the young people came to understand how atom arrangement influences a crystal structure. They explored everyday examples like table salt, examining them under a digital microscope, with many surprised at the cuboidal form of salt crystals. One accompanying adult to the festival workshop fed back, The team was perfect, we really loved them. It was very hands-on experience, educational and fun at the same time. My young person really loved it and left happy and enthusiastic to experiment. In preparation for the festival, the Crystal Explorers workshop was delivered in 9 primary school classes across Midlothian as part of their smaller science festival. The trips brought chemistry research and practical experiments to communities often geographically isolated from higher education or STEM learning. We hope the 250+ young people that participated in the workshop are equipped to spot crystals in everyday life and are enthused towards chemistry and STEM subjects as they progress through their education. Publication date 21 Apr, 2025
