I’m a crystallographer in training. I love crystals. They’re pretty. Organikers love ‘em too, since it’s another away asides from NMR to go through it. But asides from using SHELXTL or CRYSTALS, the math behind crystallography is lost on some people, so here’s an exercise.
So here are a bunch of pictures. To the left is an array of atoms and the right is its corresponding Fourier transform/x-ray scattering. Which ones are allowed by traditional symmetry? Yes, I’m going to talk more about crystallography, but I thought I’d put this out first…
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[...] translational symmetry. 2, 3, 4 and 6 fold symmetry shows translation. If you look in the earlier post, then you’ll see that the pictures to the left have translational symmetry in the atoms, [...]