image: This is a microscope image of a crystal grown on a water droplet. The crystal is composed of colloidal particles 1 micrometer in diameter (about 1/100 the width of a human hair, and 10,000 times larger than an atom). Just as strips cut from a sheet of paper cannot perfectly cover a ball, the crystal cannot cover the droplet uniformly. As a result, it grows into ribbon-like domains that branch apart. These structures might provide insights into the formation of curved nanoscale objects such as viruses. This image relates to a paper that appeared in the Feb. 7, 2014, issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by Guangnan Meng at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA, and colleagues was titled, "Elastic Instability of a Crystal Growing on a Curved Surface." view more
Credit: Image courtesy of Guangnan Meng and Vinothan N. Manoharan, Harvard University