Quasicrystal

Okay kiddo, imagine you have a bunch of blocks that you like to stack together to make a tower. You normally stack them in a pattern, like a pyramid or a rectangle. But what if you could stack them in a way that makes a pattern that never repeats itself, like a puzzle without a picture?

That's what quasicrystals are! They are a type of material made up of tiny building blocks called atoms that are stacked together in a pattern that looks random but actually follows some rules. This pattern doesn't repeat itself like regular crystals do, and can be made up of different shapes and sizes of blocks.

Scientists thought for a long time that this was impossible, but in the 1980s they discovered that quasicrystals could exist. They had never seen anything like it before, and it blew their minds.

Now, people use quasicrystals to make things like non-stick coatings for frying pans and very strong materials for airplanes. They're still trying to figure out all the cool things quasicrystals can do, but one thing's for sure – they're definitely not your average blocks!