Answer 1:
Though people have been studying crystals for a
long time now, there are still some aspects of
crystal growth that are mysterious. There are
really two separate processes that are going on in
crystal growth. The first step is called
nucleation. This describes the formation
of a microscopic chunk of crystal and is still not
all that well understood. The second step is the
actual growth of the crystal into something
macroscopic that you can see.
For the most part, light does not have much of
an effect on these two processes, as far as I
know. On the other hand, crystal growth does
depend on many other things (for example, surfaces
or impurities tend to nucleate crystals) and light
can have an affect on these things. For
example, ice crystals will form on the surface of
silver iodide crystals if you illuminate the
surface of the silver iodide with white light but
will not form if you illuminate the surface with
red light.
There are also some hints that the
polarization of light from an infrared
laser can affect the structure of the crystal
also, at least in crystal made from a particular
molecule. This would be a direct interaction
between the light and the molecules which form the
crystal. Light also seems to speed up the
crystal nucleation rate from a few days to a few
seconds.
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