Beautiful 'flowers' self-assemble in a beaker

With the hand of nature trained on a beaker of chemical fluid, the most delicate flower structures have been formed in a laboratory -- and not at the scale of inches, but microns. These minuscule sculptures, curved and delicate, don't resemble the cubic or jagged forms normally associated with crystals, though that's what they are. Rather, fields of carnations and marigolds seem to bloom from the surface of a submerged glass slide, assembling themselves a molecule at a time.

Read the whole article on Science Daily

More from Science Daily