Symmetry in crystallography: understanding the international tables

A fresh approach to teaching crystallographic symmetry. Rather than being swamped by heavy algebraic notation, the reader is taken through a series of simple and beautiful examples from the visual arts, and taught how to analyse them employing the 'pictorial' diagrams used in the International Tables of Crystallography. This book presents the reader with a fresh and unconventional approach to teaching crystallographic symmetry. Whereas traditional crystallography textbooks make a heavy use of algebra and rapidly become very technical, this book adopts in the first few chapters a 'pictorial' approach based on the symmetry diagrams of the International Tables for Crystallography. Readers are led step-by-step through simple 'frieze' and 'wallpaper' patterns, with many examples from the visual arts. Atthe end of chapter 3 they should be able to identify and analyse all these simple symmetries and apply to them the nomenclature and symbols of the International Tables. Mathematical formalism is introduced later on in the book, and by that time the reader will have gained a solid intuitive grasp ofthe subject matter. This book will provide graduate students, advanced undergraduate students and practitioners in physics, chemistry, earth sciences and structural biology with a solid foundation to master the International Tables of Crystallography, and to understand the relevant literature. INDICE: Symmetry around a fixed point Frieze patterns and frieze groups Wallpaper (plane) groups Coordinate systems in crystallography The mathematical form of symmetry operators Distances, angles and the real and reciprocal spaces A phase transition in 2 dimensions Point groups in 3D The 14 3D Bravais lattices 3D space group symmetry Symmetry and reflection conditions in reciprocal space The Wigner-Seitz constructions and the Brillouin zones

• ISBN: 978-0-19-955065-4
• Editorial: Oxford University
• Encuadernacion: Cartoné
• Páginas: 144
• Fecha Publicación: 22/09/2011
• Nº Volúmenes: 1
• Idioma: Inglés