CRISTALES: A world to discover. An exhibition for schools and universities

Abstract

The exhibition CRISTALES: a world to discover is a teaching/outreach activity whose main goals are to increase awareness of the importance of crystallography and its role in everyday life in modern society, motivate young people, and promote education and research in crystallography. CRISTALES is designed to inspire the audience with a careful design and a view of crystallography that places the emphasis not only on the most important contributions of crystallography to society's welfare, including new materials and biomedical research, but also on those aspects of crystallography related to art and the mind. This article describes the simplest version of the exhibition, composed of 14 posters that have been created specifically for schools and universities. Each poster displays an image that is both aesthetically powerful and scientifically intriguing, so as to provoke the curiosity of the students. The posters also contain a brief text explaining the image and its relation to crystallography and a QR code that links the poster to a web page containing further information.