Complete 5 page APA formatted essay: Xray Crystallography.With the advancement in technology and discovery of X-rays, crystallographers found a powerful source of obtaining complete information about

Complete 5 page APA formatted essay: Xray Crystallography.

With the advancement in technology and discovery of X-rays, crystallographers found a powerful source of obtaining complete information about any type of crystal. With a wavelength of the order of 1010, comparable to that of the diameter of an atom, X-rays have the ability to penetrate into the crystal and get diffracted by atom, ions or molecules in their way. With the discovery of this technique in 1940s, the scientists used the specific wave-particle nature of X-rays to determine the arrangement of the constituent specie in a crystal. Crystal and its pattern: Crystal is a three dimensional pattern obtained by the repetition of unit cell, the smallest possible, arranged volume of any crystalline solid. In crystals, the atoms, ions or molecule (the constituent species) are held into their orderly arranged positions by inter atomic, inter ionic or inter molecular forces respectively. The scientists were searching for a way to determine the pattern of their arrangement. Once the pattern could be known, all the other information about the substance was easy to get. Crystals were not studied, deeply, until the 17th century. “Crystal symmetry was first investigated experimentally by Nicolas Steno (1669), who showed that the angles between the faces are the same in every exemplar of a particular type of crystal, and by Rene Just Hauy (1784), who discovered that every face of a crystal can be described by simple stacking patterns of blocks of the same shape and size.” (“X-ray Crystallography.