Experimental Soft Condensed Matter Group Harvard University, Prof. D. A. Weitz Cool Picture of the Moment

Small crystalline nuclei form in dense colloidal suspensions of hard spheres, eventually resulting into formation of the bulk crystal. The structure of the early nuclei is non-spherical, and incompletely compact. The reconstructed nuclei consist of 38 particles each. One of these nuclei grows, and is structurally more compact. The other one shrinks, and has a more ramified structure. This indicates possible correlation between structural degrees of freedom of the nuclei, and their probability to grow. Such correlation, disregarded by nucleation theories, is proved by statistical analysis of the experimental data.

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