teaching and education 1474 https://doi.org/10.1107/S1600576718009573 J. Appl. Cryst. (2018). 51, 1474–1480 Received 26 February 2018 Accepted 4 July 2018 Edited by J. M. Garcı ´a-Ruiz, Instituto Andaluz de Ciencias de la Tierra, Granada, Spain ‡ These authors contributed equally to the work. Keywords: science laboratories; research experience; crystal growth; X-ray crystallography; education. Supporting information: this article has supporting information at journals.iucr.org/j Crystal growth, a research-driven laboratory course Jamie Whelan, a ‡ Joseph Koussa, a Ibrahim Chehade, a Merima Sabanovic, a Adrienne Chang, a Daniel Carelli, a Zhihua An, b,c Lu Zhang, b Joel Bernstein a,b,d and Wael M. Rabeh a *‡ a Faculty of Science, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, b Faculty of Science, New York University Shanghai, Pudong, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China, c Department of Chemistry, New York University, New York, NY 10003, USA, and d Department of Chemistry, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, 84120, Israel. *Correspondence e-mail: wael.rabeh@nyu.edu The research-driven laboratory experiment described herein has at its core the individual development of students, combining core subject matter with the opportunity to explore, in a research environment, areas outside of traditional curricula; however, it maintains the pedagogical training for an undergraduate major degree in chemistry and sciences in general. The laboratory can feasibly be implemented in high schools to expose students to an engaging and intellectually fulfilling aspect of chemistry early in their career. This seven-week project is based on the growth and study of crystals and encourages students, from the outset, to conceive, propose, design, plan and carry out their own research on chemicals and conditions of their own choosing. The wide array of laboratory equipment, analytical instrumentation and techniques that the students are potentially exposed to, from micropipettes and optical microscopes to scanning electron microscopy and powder X-ray diffraction, puts these projects on a par with senior capstone research projects. The feedback from the students for the seven years this project has been in operation is almost unanimous in enthusiasm and praise. 1. Introduction As defined by the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr), a material is a crystal if it has essentially a sharp diffraction pattern. The smallest repeating collection of components is termed the ‘unit cell’, the crystal building block, and the way in which these blocks are organized together determines the shape and size of a crystal. The purpose of the crystal growth project presented here is to enhance the overall learning experience of chemistry laboratory courses and to engage undergraduate science and engineering students in the design and execution of their own research projects (Grazulis et al., 2015). It is also expected that with slight modifications this project can be easily incorporated into high schools as a stand-alone chemistry experiment or a more integrative project spanning several scientific disciplines. Here, we show how the design of a seven-week course around crystals and crystal growth enables students to incorporate their scientific preferences into their own individual project and even experience an introduction to research science. Traditional general chemistry and science laboratory experiments tend to follow the same approach, where students are introduced to the topic to be studied through some visual aids (board, PowerPoint etc.). Next, the procedure is explained in sufficient detail that the students can carry out the experi- ment with little or no intellectual input; following this, students ISSN 1600-5767 # 2018 International Union of Crystallography