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crystal

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Types of crystal crystal, a solid body bounded by natural plane faces that are the external expression of a regular internal arrangement of constituent atoms, molecules, or ions. The formation...

liquid crystal

(Encyclopedia)liquid crystal, liquid whose component particles, atoms or molecules, tend to arrange themselves with a degree of order far exceeding that found in ordinary liquids and approaching that of solid cryst...

Crystal Lake

(Encyclopedia)Crystal Lake, city (2020 pop. 40,269), McHenry co., NE Ill., in a farming area; inc. 1874. Electrical components, tools, plastics, and machinery are man...

Crystal Palace

(Encyclopedia)Crystal Palace, building designed by Sir Joseph Paxton and erected in Hyde Park, London, for the Great Exhibition in 1851. In 1854 it was removed to Sydenham, where, until its damage by fire in 1936, ...

rock crystal

(Encyclopedia)rock crystal: see quartz.

Nicol prism

(Encyclopedia)Nicol prism nĭkˈəl [key], optical device invented (1828) by William Nicol of Edinburgh. It consists essentially of a crystal of calcite, or Iceland spar, that is cut at an angle into two equal piec...

X-ray crystallography

(Encyclopedia)X-ray crystallography, the study of crystal structures through X-ray diffraction techniques. When an X-ray beam bombards a crystalline lattice in a given orientation, the beam is scattered in a defini...

Bragg, Sir William Henry

(Encyclopedia)Bragg, Sir William Henry, 1862–1942, English physicist, educated at King William's College, Isle of Man, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He served on the faculties of the Univ. of Adelaide in Austra...

Laue, Max von

(Encyclopedia)Laue, Max von mäks fən louˈə [key], 1879–1960, German physicist, studied under Max Planck. From 1919 he was professor of theoretical physics at the Univ. of Berlin. He worked out a method for me...

cleavage

(Encyclopedia)cleavage, tendency of many minerals to split along definite smooth planar surfaces determined by their crystal structure. The directions of these surfaces are related to weaknesses in the atomic struc...