Powder X-ray Diffraction Rings

A powder or polycrystalline sample contains countless tiny crystallite grains pointing in every possible random direction, so instead of the single-crystal rotation photograph's discrete spots, the same Bragg diffraction physics produces continuous rings on a flat detector — the classic Debye-Scherrer geometry. This simulator computes the real reciprocal-lattice spacings for a chosen cubic structure (simple cubic, FCC, or BCC, with their true structure-factor extinction rules), solves Bragg's law for each allowed family of lattice planes, and projects the resulting cones onto a flat plate at a chosen distance to get exact ring radii. A live grain-flash animation shows individual crystallites firing at random positions around each ring as the exposure accumulates, and hovering the plate reads off the scattering angle and nearest {hkl} family under the cursor.