"The Experience of ""Voyage dans le cristal"" Travelling Museum Exhibition"

Crystallography is little-known to the public, even though it underpins much of research into matter in physics, chemistry, new materials and life sciences. On one side, crystallography is present in almost every field of scientific or technical activity and innovative applications. On the other side, origins of crystallography start from humanity's interaction and interrogation with crystals from prehistoric times to the present day. We can use these two characteristics to focus interest large publics on crystallography and show young pupils and students the importance of the scientific approach. To introduce Crystallography to a large public in the World, scientists and scientific organisations from the Steering Committee for the International Year of Crystallography in France and from the Grenoble "100 years of crystallography" group, have joined forces to create a set of multilingual hands-on travelling exhibitions. The complete version of this exhibition exists in English, French and Spanish and is planned in Arabic, Russian, and several other languages. For smaller events, a short version of this exhibition already exists in Flemish, French, Russian, Swedish, Arabic, English, Slovakian and many other languages. Now, they are taking to the road and several destinations have been programmed for 2014 in Africa, Asia, Europe and America. This travelling exhibition entitled "Journey into the Crystal" takes visitors on a journey of discovery of matter - but also on a journey through time to the beginnings of crystallography. Through this Journey into the Crystal, the public discover why crystal intrigues people so much, why it is so useful to science and why it plays such an important role in our daily lives. Learn about the birth of crystallography and the multiple facets of crystals: · An object of beauty · An object for science that brings us essential knowledge about matter · A contemporary object with numerous applications.