Crystals, the Dummies Version

Quartz vs glass structure

One of the defining features of minerals is that they have an "ordered internal structure," which is a fancy way of saying that every mineral has crystalline structure at the atomic level. That's why yesterday's DotD was off base, by the way: glass is a noncrystalline solid. Believe it or not, there's a discipline of science that does nothing but study the "ordered internal structure" of crystals and how that affects their appearance and physical properties. It's a safe bet, however, that eHowian Ezmeralda Lee (sometimes known as Civita Dyer) did not study crystallography: if you want proof, consider her Sciencing.com post "What Is a Crystal and How Does it Form?"

If you wanted a scientific definition of a crystal – and the website is, after all, "Sciencing" – you might look up the word. Once you got past the Webster's-level definition, you would find that the scientific definition includes such words as "solid," "highly ordered," and "lattice" – though nothing about transparency or jewelry. On the other hand, if you read Ezmeralda's definition, you find that,

"Crystals are beautiful rock formations that have amazed humans for thousands of years. 

Ummm, yeah... that one sentence contains too many mistakes and misinterpretations to cover in one day's blog entry. So, we'll just look at (and correct) a few of Ezmeralda's (Civita's?) more egregious errors...

• "Many of the first radios ever invented used crystals to transmit the radio waves..." – No, they used crystals to receive transmissions.
• "The majority of crystals now are man-made in laboratories." – Surely she's kidding. No, she's not...
• "They are extremely rare to find in the Earth" – Surely she's kidding. No, she's not...
• "Crystals are nothing more than an established batch of molecules or atoms." – We're not even sure what that means...

• "Crystals come in many different shapes and sizes, and each one has different characteristics." – Once again, we're not even sure... but that's not true: no matter what the shape or size of a quartz crystal, it always has the same characteristics. That's how you identify it!
• "all crystal form [sic] the same way, atoms come together and become a uniformed cluster." – WTF is a "uniformed cluster"?
• "Not all crystals form in water. Some crystals can be formed in an element named carbon." – We're not gonna touch that rubbish... 

We could have expanded this award post into several days' worth of entries, but we'll stop here. Suffice it to say that Lee's article contains more errors than sentences, and almost as many errors as there are words. Although hers is a very late entry in the field, Ezmeralda is almost certain to do Dumbass of the Day one better: she's very likely to be the Dumbass of the Year!

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