The Crystals in the Classroom presentation describes how the cutting-edge rapid growth crystal technology developed to produce optics materials for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is being used to help teach chemistry in high school classrooms. Dr. Natalia Zaitseva, the scientist who perfected this crystal growth method, will discuss how crystals are grown and used to produce optics materials for the world's largest laser in NIF. Ms. Seeley, a chemistry teacher from Monte Vista High School, will illustrate some of the properties of crystals, how students can grow crystals, and describe how she is using this cutting-edge crystal technology in her classroom. Speaker Bios Dr. Natalia Zaitseva earned a Master of Science degree in Physical Chemistry and Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics from Moscow State University. She came to LLNL in 1993 to develop the technology to rapidly grow giant crystals. This technology has been applied to produce giant KDP crystals which are used as optics for the National Ignition Facility, the world's largest laser being built at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Ms. Laura Seeley is a graduate of Michigan State University. She holds a B.S.degree in forensic science with a minor in chemistry. After relocating to the Bay Area and working as a chemist for three years, she became a high school chemistry teacher. She loves teaching chemistry and has brought the rapid growth crystal technology into her classroom at Monte Vista High School in Danville, CA. She will be developing this crystal technology for classroom use and expects to begin conducting teacher inservice workshops in collaboration with LLNL-STEP in the summer of 2000. This is the first presentation in this year's Science on Saturday lecture series. The series is co-hosted by LLNL's Science & Technology Education Program and Sigma Xi.