Local kids take top prizes in a UB crystal-growing contest

The U.S. Crystal-Growing Competition hosted by UB chemist Jason Benedict this fall drew 68 entries from eight states. Participants represented cities from Cottonwood, Arizona, to Kalamazoo, Michigan.

But when all was said and done, two of the top winners were local.

The prize for “Best Overall Crystal” went to Renee Aga of Amherst Middle School in the K-8 category, and to a team from the Charter School for Applied Technologies in the high school category.

In addition, submissions from Saint Gilbert School in Grayslake, Illinois, and Timber Creek High School in Orlando, Florida, won in the “Best Quality Crystal” category, which didn’t consider size as the “overall” category did. A contender from the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora, Illinois, took home the award for “Best Teacher’s Crystal.”

Entries were judged anonymously.

The contest, which took place this fall, challenged children and teachers to grow crystals using powdered aluminum potassium sulfate, a nontoxic chemical also known as “alum.” Participants had five weeks to cultivate their specimens; first-place winners were awarded a $200 prize.

“It was just cool,” said Aga, 11, a sixth-grader, who watched her entry develop from a tiny seed of a crystal into a sparkling, 19.1-gram beauty.

Along the way, she said, she learned one of the most important lessons of science: patience.

“It takes time to grow crystals,” she said.

Judging took place in mid-December, with five UB faculty members gathered in the Natural Sciences Complex on a gray, windy day.

The referees, picked by Benedict, were Timothy Cook, assistant professor of chemistry; Philip Coppens, SUNY Distinguished Professor of chemistry; Ekin Atilla-Gokcumen, assistant professor of chemistry; Andrea Markelz, professor of physics; and Luis Velarde, assistant professor of chemistry.

The group huddled around a conference table, holding crystals of varying quality up to the light. Some entries — especially smaller ones — were clear like diamonds and beautifully shaped. Others were heftier but murky and jagged like rock candy. All were stored in small Solo cups bearing only a letter and number to distinguish each sample from the others.

On a white board at the front of the room, Benedict, who did not take part in judging, had written down the characteristics the judges should consider. His guidance was straightforward, including the following points:

“Intact/Broken Edges — Exactly as it sounds. Broken = BAD,” and, “Clarity/muddiness — Can you see through the crystal.”

Coppens, a UB faculty member since 1968 and one of the world’s eminent crystallographers, didn’t need the tips to know what made a good crystal.

Faced with a sea of Solo cups, he was able to tell whether he’d already seen a specimen just by looking. Picking out a crystal he hadn’t yet judged, he said, “I think it’s twinned. It’s interesting, but…”

But it probably wasn’t going to be a winner.

Twinning is when two crystals grow to become one with an irregular shape, and it’s not a trait the judges wanted to see.

To pick the “Best Overall Crystals,” Benedict used a formula that took into account the judges’ scores of quality, as well as mass (a way to measure size).

Benedict hopes that this year’s contest will be the first of more to come. He plans to make the competition an annual event.

His goal is to get young people excited about the science behind crystals, which are used in industries from computing to drug development.

“When you see this thing growing every day, it’s awesome. It’s so cool, and kids are just going to fall in love with this,” he predicted last fall before the contest got under way.

That was certainly true for Renee Aga, the K-8 champion from Amherst Middle School.

She learned about the contest through her mother, Diana Aga, a UB chemistry professor, who shared some “How-To” videos Benedict made for the competition.

After that, Renee was on her own.

She dissolved the powdered alum into warm water, then let the solution to evaporate slowly. As the water level fell, bits of alum emerged and clustered together to form tiny seed crystals.

Renee selected the best two and hung them from strings in a beaker. There, they continued to develop under Renee’s careful watch, taking the octahedral shape that alum crystals should. If she spotted other crystals starting to grow in the solution, she eliminated them to keep her prize specimens clean.

She doesn’t know, yet, what she’ll do with the $200 she won. But she knows she had fun doing science.