How Crystals Work

will will be home free. Plus it's I mean plus it's crystals, like they're they're so worth understanding, going to the trouble of understanding because they are um basically a finger in the eye to the tendency of the universe to move towards chaos and disorder. Because a crystal is

the most ordered structure in the universe. It's a a pattern that repeats over and over and over again, so much so that in a crystal, if you look at a perfectly formed, pure crystal that that came to be under ideal conditions, the shape that you're looking at, if you could zoom in to the smallest three dimensional unit of atoms inside that crystal, it would be the exact same shape. Yeah, I mean that is one uh, the one positive I took out of this article was just

that thing. Early on the author did about the word crystallize m that we take colloquially. Colloquially, that was a couple of extrals in there that we take to you know what, everyone knows what that means, and it means like, you know, someone has distilled and made order out of something tough, uh, with their with their mouth words, right,

and that makes sense. Yeah, So when you when you think about like an actual physical crystal, you get why that word came from that, because it is that it is this extreme order where all these molecules come together as friends to be perfect together. So um, so we both love crystals for basically the same reason. It sounds like, right, yeah,

and like that. Before I started researching this, I just thought, I don't know, like crystals were just the things you buy in little five points at the shop with the cookie person who you know, wears them on their forehead for healing chakras. Before they were cool and I didn't I didn't even realize that It's like crystals are also salt and sugar and snowflakes and diamonds and rubies. It's it's uh like you're you're a crystal as far as I'm concerned, So are you, Chuck? Thanks? Can we all

be crystals in our heart? Should our heart chakras? Yes? So? Um yeah. There was a big takeaway from me too, was the fact that crystals aren't necessarily a thing. There a type of structure that a thing can fall into, you know what I mean? Ye, and there and there's seven basic shapes or lattices that a crystal can take cubic, trigonal, try clinic, mh orthorhombic, triamic, triaminic, hexagonal, tetragonal, and monoclinic monoclinic. I don't I think there's like ten people on the

planet who say that word out loud. Ever, so however you want to say, nine of them will email us, right, so um yeah, And again there's lattice shapes that you just described. Those are three dimensional structures arrangements of atoms and the crystal itself that you can sit and hold in your hand and be like, I can feel the energy just pulsating through this um. If you zoomed in the smallest three dimensional arrangement of atoms that that forms

a pattern that can be repeated. The minimal size pattern that's repeated is called the unit cell that is the exact same shape. I just I can't. I'm gonna say that five different times I think in this episode. So there's two okay, and um, oh hey sorry, I know we've already gotten started, but do you mind if I do a little plug here? Who I know it's yeah, sure, Josh's Crystal Shop. So just real quick, everybody, jeez, this is really poorly placed, isn't it. I think it's great.

We're not talking about Crystal, so it's good. Right, So I wanted to plug. I'm gonna do some live shows chuck. Yeah. Um, I'm going to be in Minneapolis at the Parkway Theater on June eight, okay, okay, and then the next night on June time supposed to be Yes, you are. I've got a firm row seat reserve for you both, and it's gonna I'm gonna have actually a cardboard cutout of you sitting there so everybody will know, they'll notice have chucked in and show up, you know what I mean.

The next night, Um, you're going to have to travel to d C. Because that's where I will be at the Miracle Theater on June. And um, if people were so inclined to buy tickets, they could go to the the Parkway Theater dot com or the Miracle Theater dot com and there's tickets there. And I assume this is into the World material correct, Yeah, sorry, thanks for that. I'm so bad at this. Um the the It's the

End of the World Live. And whether you've seen the Listen to the End of the World series by now the podcast series and made um or not, you would still get something out of This is gonna be a pretty cool show because it kind of takes these seams and expands on them and explores other other avenues, other blind allies that I can't go down in the series. I love it. Go everybody, go, go go. I appreciate that,

of course. So obviously we're talking about crystals again now, Yeah, so, uh, crystals can be very small, like and we you know, are a great snowflake episode is a pretty good example, or they can be very big and the longer these crystals grow, the bigger they're gonna get and they're gonna have fewer contaminants. Although as we will learn when we talk about gemstones, those contaminants are where they get their brilliant colors. Right, yeah, so you kind of want contaminants.

But most crystals, from from what I understand, are colorless, Like most um uh, pure crystals are colorless. Pure just don't say pure crystal. That's different. That's different things. So, um, you hit upon something that I think is also worth

pointing out. Like usually when people think of crystals, again, they're thinking of like that little five points hippie shop kind of crystal, and you imagine it being formed in like a cave or in some sort of fissure in the earth or something like that somewhere inside the earth. But like you said, snowflakes they form above the earth, Salt forms on the earth surface. These are all crystals. So again, a crystal is not necessarily just a thing. It's a it's a structure. It's a repeating pattern of

an arrangement of atoms that is a crystal. And one way to remember this um or to really just kind of have the the awe smacked into your your forehead chakra is carbon can be arranged in different ways, so the same the same molecule of carbon can be arranged in a way, um that makes it graphite or makes it a diamond. So, chemically speaking, diamonds and graphites are the exact same thing. Um. Crystallogically speaking, they are two

different things because they form two different crystalline structures. Right. And if you're confused by saying the words little five points to time times, uh, we just assume everyone is from our neighborhood in Atlanta. But that isn't an area of Atlanta where you can find a drum circle or buy a crystal or some parking stocks, or some high quality incense, or pure crystal, or probably pure crystal in the white corner. If there's a pretty good Halloween parade too. Yeah,

you know, it's great. It's it's remained fairly unchanged since I was hanging out there in high school. It's it's kind of kind of great in that way. I would think just about every city has its own version of little five points, wouldn't you. Yeah, absolutely, I've been to them in every city. Okay, so there you go. So that's what we're talking about when we see a little five points everybody. Yes, So, um, let's talk crystal, Let's talk how how um like what an actual crystal is

made from or how it's made. I guess no, No, I still can't come up with the word what makes a crystal? Crystal? That's what I'm looking for, Yeah, because it can get really confusing if you think about the fact that crystals can be salt or snowflakes, or semiconductors or in a computer display monitor or a television as liquid crystal. It's and I know we've hammered this home, but it's it's really all those things. Because crystals are a formation, right, right, So you you take atoms of

a certain type of variety UM. Usually ions are a big early like predecessor atom of um crystals ions, right, they're either positively or negatively charged atoms as an ion, right, so they've got an extra electron. They are missing an electron. Something went horribly awry with their electrons and it converted

this atom into a charged atom. And those ions can attract other ions, they can repel certain kinds of ions, and they start to clump together in a certain way, and they will depending on the ion um or eventually the atom. I don't think you have to have ions to have crystals. I just think they're the most common basic type of atom that you find in a crystal.

But depending on the type of ion or atom that starts setting off this um aggregation or attraction of other atoms into a clump, it's going to start to form a three dimensional model what I spoke about earlier, what are called unit cells, and that little three dimensional model is going to start attracting more atoms, and another three dimensional model the exact same variety is going to be built.

And now you've just gone from a unit cell, the most basic unit of the three dimensional shape of a crystal, into the lattice, which is the build out of that that unit upon unit upon unit upon unit that just can keep going and going virtually and definitely. Yeah, it's almost like they these ions are attracted and when they get there or they see what's going on, what kind of party they're having, and they're like that looks great

to me. Yep, Like I'm gonna jump in there, and why would I want to mess it up by being any different? Yeah, I really feel like falling in line. It's kind of a fastest piece of matter if you think about it, a crystal. Yeah, And there were another couple of decent descriptions um or metaphors, I guess in this article in terms of long range order and short range order. I thought that made a little bit of sense. Um uh if if because crystals, like you said, can it can be a single crystal, or it can be

a very large structure. And if it's a long range order, they liken it to like a halftime band, all marching in formation, like two people all together in synchronicity like that. Okay, does that sound about right? Yeah? I just found that deeply confusing, but I got it now once you explained it, I got it. Uh. Short range order, on the other hand, they like into that marching band, scattering around into smaller sub units, and this is more like liquid crystal like

you would find in a TV monitor. Yeah. And so from the research that I saw this, short range crystals almost didn't even need to be mentioned in this UM article because it has so few um it appears in so few places that really, when you're talking about crystals, it almost by definition has to have long range structure.

I mean you usually think almost always of crystals is solid manner right exactly, um with with basically short ranges, just this crystalline structure, the unit cell forms over a few atoms, and anything beyond that is long range, and that's when you start to get into the money. Crystals, I guess is what you call them. Yeah, you want to take a break. Sure you're feeling okay so far? I'm all right. Yeah, me too. Man, Uh, we will be right back, everybody. We're gonna go breathe into a

paper bag. Okay, we're back. We went through three paper bags. It's so funny after eleven years, we still care enough that we can feel like we're hanging on by our fingernails, but we still pushed through and generally get it right. I'm good with generally correct, right, Yeah, Um, most of the time we get it right. There's there's that little bit of impurity, and those impurities give the individual podcasts.

They're brilliant hues. That makes some jams very nice. So, um, there's a little more to talk about about how crystals form. Right again, when we're talking about crystals, I guarantee you the thing coming into your mind is an amethyst or maybe even you're you're savvy enough to know that precious gems are also crystals, like sapphires or rubies or something

like that. Um, that's probably what's coming into your head and what you're seeing there, what you're imagining this brilliant, beautiful, translucent, uh perfect shape with a bunch of different facets that are on display. That is, that's a kind of crystal. But what you're talking about is a kind of crystal that formed under ideal conditions. And those ideal conditions are very rare, which is why gemstones tend to be pretty

rare more often than not. What what you will see in nature or you know, just on the ground, or you know, in some kids backpack. I don't know, I'm grasping at straws right now. Um are what are called poly crystals where the conditions that the crystals formed under and we'll talk about how crystals form in a second, but the conditions that they formed under were not ideal, and there were a bunch of different kinds of ad

is present. And so rather than forming one beautiful single crystal, because again, when you have this giant, beautiful tetrahedron of amethyst in your hand, that is one that's considered one single crystal, it's one giant crystal. If you have a big rock with a bunch of like um, pyrite in

it just kind of sparkling back at you. What you're holding is a countless number of individual crystals that all kind of grew together, and rather than forming one beautiful crystal, they formed one big lump or mass, and it's still a bunch of crystals, and it's still as crystalline structure. It's just multiple crystals, and it's called a poly crystal, and that's what you see much more frequently, because again,

conditions for crystals to grow under are infrequently ideal. Right, And this is where I step in and make the one joke that I thought up during that which that Tetrahydron of Amethysts was the best Yes album. Yeah, let's a good one. Yes, I have to say, Yes did second to Iron Maiden and Beautiful album covers. They were pretty good. They had great ones. Um So, polychress, contrary to what you might think or here or read, are not stronger than single crystals because it's like, uh, I mean,

it kind of makes sense. If you're assembling a model from a hundred pieces, it's probably not as strong as something that's made from one thing because where they join, it's gonna have weak points. That's a million percent right right, Because again, if you if you realize that a beautiful giant crystal is just one solid piece, those all those little smaller crystals, they they're going to break apart much

more easily because they have weak spots. They're not joined together with these amazing covalent or ionic bonds that are holding that that single crystal together. So it makes sense in that respect. So, um, let's talk about how crystals are formed. Do you want to? There's really basically just three ways that before and whether whether they're human made

or made in nature, they basically come about three different ways. Yeah, And um, I'm gonna skip out of order here because for the kids out there, you can actually grow a crystal at home in pretty short order and it's pretty neat. So if you are a kid, or if you're a parent with some kids, here's what one kind of fun thing that you can do. And this is how to make a crystal out of a solution, which is one of the three ways. Uh, you can actually grow a

sodium chloride salt crystal in just a few days. It's not the kind of thing you need to wait around like a year, four or millions of years. That's right. So to do this, kids, you need get some whatever kind of salt you can, but you can just get regular sodium chloride, table salt, some distilled water, a glass, uh like bell jar, any kind of glass is great, um,

and then a spoon. You stir salt into boiling hot water until no more of it will dissolve, and you're gonna start to see some crystal start starting to appear at the bottom of this thing. And make sure the water is as close to boiling as you can get. Then you're gonna pour that solution into that clear jar and you put the spoon there is just to make sure the jar doesn't break. That always helps, okay. Is that we've got to do a short stuff on the

physics of that someday. Yeah, yeah, I remember that was an old like uh waiting tables trick when you made ice coffee, which is just when what we did was just pour hot coffee and a big thing ice. Sure, well this is pre hot coffee cold brew. Yeah. Um. So then you suspend a string, that string that I told you about, uh into the jar from a spoon and just laid across the top of the jar, so it's hanging down in that solution and then just don't touch it for a while and you will literally see

crystals forming on this string over the next few days. Yep, it's really really cool. It is very cool. Um. I saw another experiment you could do at home. It's got a couple of extra steps, but you can make um a beautiful kind a magenta colored crystal with um just straight up album and a couple of things. You grow a seed crystal and you use that you dangle it like on a string, like you were saying, but it actually grows more crystals up to it as well, So

you can grow the stuff at home. And both of those are crystal grown from solution and crystal grown from solution. Is like you were just saying. You put in salt into hot water until you can't dissolve it anymore. That means that the salt or the water has become saturated with salt. No, it cannot hold any more salt, right, sorry, t s. But that salt gotta go somewhere and it will eventually be forced into a solid state, especially as

that liquid cools. Because water that's warmer or anything that's warmer, means that that the atoms and the molecules are further apart, which means there's more space for salt. But as that water cools down, that space shrinks and that salt's gotta go somewhere, so it turn into the solid state and forms crystals. And it's that that happens with salt at a relatively cool temperature at a relatively low pressure, you know, basically sea level pressure on Earth. But that same thing

can happen under water and hydrothermal vents. It can happen with magma inside the mantle of the Earth. Um, there's there's the ship. The conditions can change, so you have different temperatures, different pressures, different types of atoms, and they'll form under those different conditions, different kinds of things. But crystals can form anywhere. They can form on the surface

of the Earth again, in clouds and inside the Earth itself. Yeah, And if you're going to grow from a solution like that, like you do in your kitchen, you can produce crystals much much faster, and produce bigger crystals than you can with a vapor deposition, which is you know, snowflakes, which we've talked about a lot on the show, which is

basically so vapor depic is basically the same thing. Instead of a liquid solution becoming super saturated, a gaseous solution has become super saturated saturated and so that the water vapor can't the air can't hold anymore, so it pushes it into a solid state and forms snow flakes. Yeah. Then there's a third method, uh, from growth from melt, which is really kind of interesting. And there's a few

different ways to do this too. Um. But basically what you're doing is you're cooling a gas until it's a liquid and then chilling that liquid until it starts that you know, crystallization process. Uh. And there's there's a few ways. There's one called crystal pulling or the here we go zakrawl Ski method. Yeah. And this is this is a human made method of creating crystals, right. Yeah. It was named from a Polish scientist by the name of Za

karl Ski Kasimir funk Uh in nineteen fifteen. And this, you know, all of these involved actual machines and this you know when you hear about superconductors and stuff like that, like this is these are man made things. Are human made things, uh, And methods and processes that people figured out a long long time ago, right, Crystal pulling is pretty not so amazing. Did you see any videos on it? Yeah, I watched some videos and looked at like some still

images of the machinery. It is pretty cool. So it's like, do you do that science experiment that I found where you created crystal and then you tie it to a fishing line. You basically just hang it over the solution. This is that's a very simple version of what they're doing with crystal pulling. You're using a seed crystal that is basically providing the structure for the solution below it.

You you just touch that seed crystal just to the solution, and it basically sets off an attractive chain reaction that creates a crystal. So you slowly raise the crystal upward or that seed crystal upward, and the crystal follows it out of the solution. Essentially. Yes, it is. That's another reason why I love crystals. It's just the way that they form is so astounding ly awesome. And and with crystal pulling in particular, this is kind of an old technology.

I think it's from the early nineteen hundreds when it was first invented, and um since then, they've gotten so good at it, and it's so perfectly automated that they can calculate how fast the crystal forms went under crystal pulling, and so they will have the machine raise that seed

crystal at the rate of crystal formation. And now they can get to places where they're forming um crystals that have like, uh, there are a foot around in diameter that that are just perfect, absolutely perfect crystals because also the solution that they're using that they're dipping that that seed crystal into has been purified, so it's the absolutely pure version of whatever you're trying to make a crystal out of. So, uh, say that you could make diamonds

out of this, you could. You would have pure carbon in in a solution usually melted, and then you would have a diamond um dangling down as the seed and you would grow a seed diamond. That's not how you can make diamonds, but that's how they that's what they do with um silicon. Actually, yeah, and there's another method um from from with the you know, the melting method called the Bridgeman stock Barger method, named for Percy Bridgeman and Donald stock Barger. I guess it's so hard g right. Sure,

he's stock Barger. He's the Art Garfunkle of the crystal manufacturing world. And from what I got, this is used when the crystal pulling method isn't so great for certain materials. Right, And in this case, you take it's sort of like take an ice cream cone shape, a conical shape, and you lower it, uh, fill it with molten material, lower it into a cooler area, so it cools from that very bottom tip, just the tip, just the tip upward. Um,

and it just kind of the same way. It just sort of works this way up joining the party saying this looks good. I like the way you guys are shaped and ordered. I'm just gonna jump right in. Yeah. So as the tip of that cone goes further downward into the colder temperature, that crystal grows upward in the tube, right yeah. And then eventually you have a whole tube that's just one one giant crystal, that's right. And then you think, how am I going to get that out

of here? Oh? Yeah, I hadn't really pluck this out all the way. I just got a beautiful crystal trapped into a canonical tube. I'm sure this, I'm sure it opens don't you think, Well, maybe that's where what was the second name of that, I can't remember Donald, this is his first name. Well maybe that's where Donald. That was his big contribution was maybe having a hatch on

the back. Yeah, I imagine there's something like that. So if I were going to put my money down on the best human made synthetic crystal um process, it would be epitaxi and in particular UM molecular deposition, molecular molecular beam epitaxi. Yeah, and this is one again where you're growing. I mean, all of these kind of start with a base crystal and it grows from there. And in this case, the base has to be just like atomically flat. That's a good band name too. Atomically flat is pretty good

not bad math rock. Yeah, of course. So with the with the reason it has to be atomically flat is because you want to build from a pure crystal structure. And again, if you introduce atoms, especially like um, previously sordid atoms, like the kind of atoms you want UH to build this crystal structure out of um, they will fall into this arrangement when they're introduced to a crystalline structure. That's already there, and then they layer by layer, atomic

layer by atomic layer will form a crystal. Uh. That that's built out. And with molecular beam in particular, you're shooting a beam of atoms across this perfectly flat substrate, and um, they are. They're introduced in a way so they don't collide with one another. They just click click

click right into place. Yeah. Again this There were a couple of decent um examples in here, and this one they said, if you think of a wrack of billiard balls, and if you just throw a ball on top of that, it will come to rest somewhere, you know, who knows where, but somewhere between those other balls. It's not gonna It would be pretty amazing if it just sat directly on top of one of the balls, but that's not gonna happen. It's gonna find its place where it fits best. It

gets in where it fits in. Yeah. Um. And then that was from roundabout. Uh. Then there's chemical vapor death position, which is the same thing, but instead of a beam of molecules that you're sending over that substrate, you're shooting vapor. You're just blowing vapor over it. And that way the atoms kind of link up too. Yeah, and that's faster, right, it's faster. And that's what they used for synthetic diamonds. Now, I know I needed it yesterday. Remember the diamonique from

the nineties. I don't remember diamonique. Remember diamonoid and diamels it's all the same, I'm sure, yeah, or cubic or conia. Yeah, those were probably just all trade names, right, I would guess, so shure um diamonique just always stuck with me. Just sounded so fancy. It's a nice name. Um. And then lastly,

there's liquid phase epitaxi, which is pretty awesome. So imagine a solution and you have a um that perfectly flat atomic substrate crystal, and you just lifted up out of the solution, and as it comes up out of the solution, a crystal just forms out of nothing. Amazing. Oh my goodness, I can't take a chuck. You want to take a break. Yeah, we'll take another break and we'll talk about jimstones and

then crystal healing and what that's all about. Right after this. Okay, dude, I should say I was at UM the Smithsonian the other day. You know, I went up to d C because to hear Jeff Bezos delivers news about Blue Origin landing on the Moon. It was awesome. It was really cool, Like he was up there on stage and um, it was probably a room of hundred hundred fifty people maybe, and um, behind him, the curtain comes down and there's a full scale model of the Lunar Lander he's gonna

send up in like three years. It's pretty cool. Everyone gasp yes and clapped appropriately. So. But um, so, while I was there, I killed some time at the Museum of Natural History, and uh, I was just in trance that as a matter of fact, we're doing this episode because of their the crystal um display there. I was like, have we never done one on crystals? And I thought, no, we haven't, and and then I thought, well, we really should. And then I thought, well, let's go get a sandwich

in the meantime. And I wasn't there to knock you over the head with a rubber mallet. Yeah, to knock me out of the loop and be like, what happened? I don't know, man, you just passed out. He had a sandwich in his hand, but the mineral um, the mineral in crystal and gem collection they have there is just amazing. It's just so beautiful. It's like just a little wondering and you're just wandering around from case to case staring at crystals. It's really neat, and there's one

in particular that really caught my fancy. It's, uh, they just look like ordinary dumb rocks or whatever. And then the light goes out in a black light comes on in this little display case and they're fluorescent crystals embedded in the rocks. And then the light comes back on and then it goes back out and then back gut and it's really amazing to watch. And then the light came on and your pants were down, do you know, fallow my own everybody. I'm just selling this whole thing.

So jim Stones, like we said a couple of times, they are crystals, um. And here's the deal, Like depending on the type of um. I mean, we're not calling them imperfections or I guess impurities is flaws, yeah, flaws,

shameful flaws. Yeah, that's where they get their color. So like a ruby and a sapphire, they're both corundum, but rubies are red because of a little bit of chromium that replaces a little bit of aluminum aluminum in the structure, whereas sapphire comes blue because of iron and titanium instead. Right wise, they're kind of the same thing. Yeah, just somehow some of those um, some chromium or some iron or titanium atoms got sucked into the mix and they said, Hey,

I kind of like this crystal structure thing. I'm gonna hang out here. And they did, and they said, I'm gonna turn this thing blue. Watch this. Yeah, And even the name crystal, didn't that come from the Greek? From quartz? It's yeah, that's what they called courts was crystallos, which is cold drop, which we take to mean as ice um. And I read in this article. I didn't see it anywhere else that the apparently the Greeks thought courts was ice that have frozen so solid it would never melt.

It sounds a little dumb to me for the Greeks. I think the Greeks were a little hipper than that, um, because I mean, just think for a second Greeks and they would say, yes, you're right, this is something else entirely. But that's where crystal came from. Was that Greek word crystallos. Yeah, and courts. I mean, like amethyst is a kind of quartz. It's just courts with the right kind of impurity that gives it color. Yeah. And apparently they have not figured

out exactly what gives amethysts its purple color. Um. There's a debate over whether it's iron oxide or manganese or some sort of non specific hydrocarbons. Um. But if you take amethyst, so remember, crystal is just the chemistry can be exactly the same, like diamonds and graphite, but the conditions are different under which they form, and so they form different crystalline structures and appear to be totally different

from one another. Same thing happens with amethyst. If you take amethyst and the conditions are different in that the temperatures are much greater, it doesn't form purple amethysts. It forms yellow citrine, which is pretty pretty amazing. I love crystals, and I mean we could probably go on and on with different types of gemstones, but I think everyone gets the point. Yeah, yeah, the I think they do as well.

Like you could take any gemstone and break it down and explain exactly what gives it it's hugh and uh, but but I think it's I think it's all here right. So, um, that is how crystals form. And for a very long time people just kind of appreciated crystals as um for their beauty or their shape or something like that. One thing we didn't say that, I think we should say

Chuck is a crystal. It forms under ideal conditions, will take one of those seven shapes you mentioned, um, but the since the conditions are rarely ever ideal, they'll actually form other shapes under different conditions, things like plate shaped or table shaped or um needle shaped a a sicular

acicular um. So there's other shapes they can take. And people have appreciated these things all the time, Like if you've ever looked at it crystal, it's just like a shock of what looks like incredibly sharp needles, or just a tumble of perfectly shape cubes growing out of some lumpy rock or something like that. There's a lot to to appreciate their um and if you if you subscribe

to crystal healing, which has become a thing again. Um, this has been going on, this idea that these things are not only beautiful, but that they contain some sort of energy that humans can harness to uh maybe straighten our own energy out or overcome disease or something like that. Um that this has been going on for thousands and thousands of years. Yeah, so just a quick shout before

we get fully into crystal healing and that's all about. Um. Everyone want to encourage everyone to go look up some images of uh the Queva de Los crystals, the Cave of Crystals in Chihuahua, Mexico. Unbelievable if you want to see like some of the most beautiful stuff you've seen in your life that looks like something from a movie, Like it looks like the Fortress of Solitude uh in Superman. Yeah,

just unbelievable. Um, these these images of Spelunker and like these caves where some of these crystals are believed to have been growing for like half a million years. It's really really something else. Yeah, that was one thing. So we talked about how fast that they can grow. Um, they can also take a very very long time. Those are the big ones. Yeah, they're the big ones. But also, um, some crystals form just by nature slowly, whether they're bigg

or small. So like garnet in particular, forms atom layer atomic layer by atomic layer year by year, and so it can take ten million years for just a two centimeter garnet to grow over time. Amazing. So, like I was saying with this with crystal healing in particular, Chuck, these things are not only awesome or amazing or beautiful, um,

they also supposedly contain some sort of energy. Yeah. I mean, this is where it gets a little hinky, because this is one of those um things that Western medicine, for lack of a better term, has pretty much generally poo pooed uh as pseudoscience. But the idea is that these crystals UM can carry and transfer energy that can facilitate healing of like disease. Let's say, so you would book a session with a crystal healer UM. And we'll get into whether or not those people are credential at all

here in a minute. But UM, and they will lay you down on a table and they will put different crystals um. Some crystals facilitate some sort of energy, others facilitate another sort of energy, and they don't all agree on on that as well. We should point out that's kind of a big red flag. It's a big red flag. Uh. And then these crystals are placed on your body in various points, and um, they will tell you that that will uh bring in good healing energy and channel out

bad diseased energy. Yeah, and and those those points on your body are actually pretty specific and they follow the Buddhist or the Hindu chakras. Right. So you've got one on the top of your head, you have one on your forehead, on your throat, your chest, somewhere around your heart, your stomach, your gut, and then around your groin for your root chakra. And there's a different color um stone that's supposed to be associated with each of the chakras.

And there's different stones that can be roughly of that color that you could use for that chakra. And then like you were saying, they they free up energy. Like according to this this idea, energy can get kind of gunked up. And if you have a bunch of negative energy hanging around, um, it's gonna just do you wrong until you get rid of it. With crystal therapy that kind of stuff. UM, some crystals you can just put

in a room and they'll help direct energy better. Like, UM, I can't remember what crystal I saw, but it's it's it's known for its properties of facilitating communications. So really we should have one in here for me and Jerry. Um. Like, if people are talking to one another and they don't understand what the other one saying, this crystal will kind of here that Um. And so you are you're you're pink turmaline chuck. UM. So like this is the kind

of this is the idea behind crystal energy. And as I was saying a minute ago, if you follow this kind of stuff, there's a whole crystal lore and supposedly this dates back thousands of years to the Sumerians, the Egyptians, the Greeks all use crystals for healing. The problem is, there's absolutely no evidence that that's the case at all. Um. People have been writing about crystals since the the the classical Romans, but they didn't talk about the energy properties

they had. They just described them and tried to classify them. It wasn't until like the seventies or eighties that that the idea that they contain energy really seemed to catch on. Yeah, and there haven't been scientific studies really done because um, mainstream science just kind of doesn't study stuff like that.

But they have done some other kind of studies notably, almost twenty years ago, UM there was a study done at the University of London where they got how many people was eighty people together and they said, here's what we're gonna do, UM, go meditate for five minutes. Hold this UH quartz crystal in your hand. They're not gonna they don't say this, of course, but some of those are real crystals. Some of them are completely faked, but they all believed that they're real. They were lied to,

They were blatantly liked. Half of the participants, forty of them were primed beforehand to say, you know, just think about any effects and see if you can notice any effects that these crystals are having. And so after meditating they did a Q and A session UH in a questionnaire and said basically like, how do you feel the

crystal affected this healing session? And they found out that the effects reported by those who held the fake crystals while meditating were no different at all than people who had the real crystals. UM. Both reported feeling like a warm sensation in their hand holding either the fake of the real crystal, and both reported feeling an increased overall

feeling of well being. But the people who have been primed those forty two, you know, basically like think about how you're feeling and how this crystal is making you feel. They reported stronger effects than those who had not been primed. So it all sounds like placebo. Well that's yeah, that's what they attributed to. The whole thing is placebo, which

as far as Western medicines concerned, placebo is great. You know, if it's if you have some sort of ailment that this can help you get over through the placebo effect, fantastic. They they seem to kind of walk a fine line with that though, and that they are worried that people will say, oh, I'll just use crystals sat her cancer rather than chemotherapy, um, and that probably won't work. The placebo effect can't take on absolutely everything that ails you um.

And so if crystals are based on placebo, that's one way they could be dangerous, but for the most part is considered pretty harmless. Yeah. I just know that you're going in to see someone who is not like licensed or uh certainly not medically licensed. But I think generally in all states there's no like licensing of crystal healers. There's no organization looking over that. Now, I think there are some organizations but the that that do um accredit

individual healers. But those are organizations aren't accredited for themselves. So it's like at some point down the line, some like the the accreditations is being pulled out of the air. Yeah. And then there's this other thing that's a little more troublesome when it comes to babies. Um, there's this belief by some that baltic amber necklaces will help your baby's teething. Have you heard of that or your toddler's teething? No, I hadn't heard this, but um, the idea is that

something called uh succinic acid is released. It's pain relieving, and it's released from the baltic amber because your child is wearing this necklace and the skin of the child is heating up this baltic amber and it's being released uh and like gathered into the bloodstream and making your little kids teething better. Right, But there's and there is

scenic acid in baltic amber. It's true, but apparently it's just like one of those kernel of true things because it's not it's not been shown to be able to be released from the baltic amber. By saliva or body heat. So, and it's dangerous because you should not put a necklace around your baby or toddler's neck when they sleep because their um are they put stuff in their mouth. Well, that's what for them to teeth on. Are these little necklaces made of this? These stones? Oh? I didn't think

they're supposed to chew on them. I thought i'd just laid against their throat. No, I think they're supposed to chew on them. Mm hmmm, that's what I got. I'll have to look that up. I thought the idea was it laid against their skin and it was absorbed into the skin through body heat. I think that's part of it. But I think it also they chew on it too, That's what I got from it. Boy, you're really doing it wrong if you keep your baby necklace to chew

on in their sleep, right. So, so um, I have no issues with that, though, I should say I used to carry around to crystal um in my pocket all the time. Yeah, yeah, all the time for years and years and years, and like I don't recall really thinking it contained any energy or anythinking. It was more like just a neat thing to just kind of rub kind of like a fidget spinner, but but much prettier to

look at. You know, just just something to have in your hand or whatever, keep it in your pocket, like twenties. I think that explains a lot. Yeah sure, So why what age is appropriate for carrying a crystal around your pocket? Okay? Okay, that's when that happens. That's when you listen to the doors and you burn incense and stuff like that. That's right. Um. So yeah, more power to you if you're into crystals. Just don't don't shun medical advice if you have a

real big problem. No, definitely don't. Um. And that's Oh. I have one more thing about crystals, Chuck, you got a second. Okay, remember how I said that graphite and diamonds are the exact same thing. They're just arranged differently crystal wise. I saw in a couple of different places that a diamond, since they're formed under tremendous temperature and pressure, when they're taken out of that environment and brought up to Earth, they will, over a long enough time period,

melt into graphite. Amazing. It's just too long of a time period for humans to ever witness it. Hmm. Yeah. So that's crystals. Get you to the Smithsonium. Whenever you get a chance, go to the Museum of Natural History and just gaze and wonder and also wonder how your pants got down when the light came back on in the fluorescent mineral display. Because, as I said that, it's time for listener mail. Yeah, which one should I do here?

How about nicknames? Hey, guys, really enjoying the short stuffs and the nicknames episode was no exception, um, But I was surprised that you didn't go into the origin of the term nickname. I didn't think about that. I didn't either. I felt pretty shame. Yeah, I'd always assumed this might sound silly, that the first true nickname was Nicholas, shortened to nick, so they called them nicknames. But she did a little searching and said that it's not quite right.

Looks like the term started as a Middle English word in the undreds H E K. E. Dash name pronounced nick name, meaning additional name. So over time, as people said an nickname became nickname and it's nickname. We didn't have time to look this one up. But I'm the trusting Liz. Yeah, Liz, I hope you're not steering us wrong. Yeah, she said, my husband's name is Nick. This is what got me thinking of it, and I jumped to that conclusion. You could give Nick a shout on us on your show,

would be great. His birthday is next week, which means by now, it's probably a couple of weeks ago. So happy birthday, Nick, Happy birthday. Uh. And they are counting down the weeks until their twins are born. Liz is expecting a baby girl and a baby boy in late June, their first children. And she said, We've been listened to a lot of your show, well pregnant for getting Mozart and Beethoven. I'm convinced at listening to stuff you should know in utero makes baby smarter. Of course it does.

And that's from Liza Nick. And babies that will be named, uh, Josh and Chuck and Jerry, that's right. Yeah, they need to have triplets, huh. I think Chuck and Jerry is a good name. And Josh, yeah, the outsider Josh. No, it could be Josh and Jerry or Josh and Chuck. What if? What if both of them's middle name is Jerry, Josh, Jerry and Chuck Jerry? And I think that sounds great. I think it does too well. Thanks again, Liz. I hope you're right on this one, because if not, we're

going to have follow up. Listen to yourmail from other people who are pointing out how you're wrong. Either way, best wishes on your new expanded family and happy birthday, Nick. If you want to get in touch with this, like Liz did, you can go on to stuff you Should Know dot com, check out our social links, or you can send us an email to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production

of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,