The Molecular Tactics of a CrystalKelvin, William Thomson, Baron
Science
The Molecular Tactics of a Crystal
Kelvin, William Thomson, Baron
Crystallography, Mathematical
§ 18. For the division of continuous three-dimensional space[5] into
equal, similar, and similarly oriented cells, quite a corresponding
transformation from partitioning by three sets of continuous mutually
intersecting parallel planes to any possible mode of homogeneous
partitioning, may be investigated by working out the three-dimensional
analogue of §§ 16-17. Thus we find that the most general possible
homogeneous partitioning of space with plane interfaces between the
cells gives us fourteen walls to each cell, of which six are three
pairs of equal and parallel parallelograms, and the other eight are
four pairs of equal and parallel hexagons, each hexagon being bounded
by three pairs of equal and parallel straight lines. This figure, being
bounded by fourteen plane faces, is called a tetrakaidekahedron. It
has thirty-six edges of intersection between faces; and twenty-four
corners, in each of which three faces intersect. A particular case
of it, which I call an orthic tetrakaidekahedron, being that in
which the six parallelograms are equal squares, the eight hexagonal
faces are equal equilateral and equiangular hexagons, and the lines
joining corresponding points in the seven pairs of parallel faces
are perpendicular to the planes of the faces, is represented by
a stereoscopic picture in Fig. 10. The thirty-six edges and the
twenty-four corners, which are easily counted in this diagram, occur
in the same relative order in the most general possible partitioning,
whether by plane-faced tetrakaidekahedrons or by the generalized
tetrakaidekahedron described in § 19.
§ 19. The most general homogeneous division of space is not
limited to plane-faced cells; but it still consists essentially of
tetrakaidekahedronal cells, each bounded by three pairs of equal and
parallel quadrilateral faces, and four pairs of equal and parallel
hexagonal faces, neither the quadrilaterals nor the hexagons being
necessarily plane. Each of the thirty-six edges may be straight
or crooked or curved; the pairs of opposite edges, whether of the
quadrilaterals or hexagons, need not be equal and parallel; neither
the four corners of each quadrilateral nor the six corners of each
hexagon need be in one plane. But every pair of corresponding edges of
every pair of parallel corresponding faces, whether quadrilateral or
hexagonal, must be equal and parallel. I have described an interesting
case of partitioning by tetrakaidekahedrons of curved faces with curved
edges in a paper[6] published about seven years ago. In this case each
of the quadrilateral faces is plane. Each hexagonal face is a slightly
curved surface having three rectilineal diagonals through its centre in
one plane.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.]
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