Protocrystalline

Okay kiddo, do you know what crystals are? They’re like these pretty rocks that have a cool shape to them. Well, sometimes in science, we talk about something called protocrystalline. This is when a substance is trying really hard to become a crystal, but it’s still not there yet. It’s kind of like when you’re trying to make a sandcastle and you have all the sand in a bucket, but it hasn’t quite turned into a castle shape yet. The sand is like the protocrystalline substance - it’s almost there, but not quite. Scientists study protocrystalline materials because they want to learn more about how crystals form, and how to make them better. So, protocrystalline is just a fancy science word for something that’s almost a crystal, but not quite yet.