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💎 X-Ray Crystallography: Seeing Atoms Through Diffraction

Explore how X-ray crystallography uses Bragg's Law to turn diffraction patterns scattered off ordered crystal planes into precise atomic structures, from table salt to DNA and proteins.

Chemistry & Materials3DModerate60 FPS

The simulation shows an X-ray beam striking stacked atomic planes inside a crystal, letting you see how the reflected waves from successive planes fall in or out of phase as the incidence angle changes, and how that phase relationship produces a sharp diffraction spot only at the specific angles predicted by Bragg's Law.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

🎮 How to Use

Adjust the wavelength and plane-spacing sliders to change lambda and d, then sweep the incidence angle theta to watch the reflected wavefronts shift in and out of alignment, with a detector readout lighting up whenever the current angle satisfies n times lambda equals 2 times d times sine of theta.

💡 Did You Know?

Rosalind Franklin's X-ray diffraction image known as Photograph 51 took about 100 hours of exposure to capture, and its distinctive X-shaped pattern was the key piece of evidence that let Watson and Crick deduce that DNA is a double helix.

⚙ Under the hood

Explore how X-ray crystallography uses Bragg's Law to turn diffraction patterns scattered off ordered crystal planes into precise atomic structures, from table salt to DNA and proteins.

x-ray crystallographybraggs lawdiffractioncrystal structurechemistrystructural biology

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install