Crystallization is a very basic chemical process: School children can witness it with their own eyes. But scientists had not, until now, been able to observe this process on the molecular level – that is, the instant in which molecules overcome their tendencies to float individually in a liquid solution and take their place in the rigid lattice of a solid crystal structure. Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have, for the first time, directly observed the process of crystallization on the molecular level, validating some recent theories about crystallization, as well as showing that if one knows how the crystal starts growing, one can predict the end structure.