Chapter 18, Problem 2A

What evidence do we have for the microscopic crystal nature of some solids?

To determine

The evidence for crystal structure of solid.

Explanation of Solution

Introduction:

In the crystal structure, atoms are regularly arranged whereas amorphous structure is opposite to crystals which have irregular arrangement of atoms.

Atoms have very small size of the order of To study atoms, it is necessary to have a wavelength comparable to the size of atoms. X-rays have the wavelength in this range; hence X-ray diffraction is the technique useful to determine the nature of atom arrangement. During the study using X-ray diffraction, it can be seen that the diffracted rays shows the similar structure. This means that the structure is regular and crystalline.