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Teaching periodicity and aperiodicity using 3D‐printed tiles and polyhedra
Author(s) -
Casas Lluís
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of applied crystallography
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.429
H-Index - 162
ISSN - 1600-5767
DOI - 10.1107/s1600576720011772
Subject(s) - aperiodic graph , quasicrystal , polyhedron , crystallography , key (lock) , crystal (programming language) , computer science , substitution tiling , materials science , mathematics , geometry , combinatorics , chemistry , computer security , programming language
Unit cell and periodicity are key concepts in crystallography and classically were thought to be inherent properties of ordered media like crystals. Aperiodic crystals (including quasicrystals) forced a change of paradigm, affecting the actual definition of a crystal. However, aperiodicity is usually not taught in crystallography undergraduate courses. The emergence of low‐cost 3D‐printing technologies makes it possible to tackle hands‐on learning of the commonly taught crystallography concepts related to periodicity and to introduce in an uncomplicated manner aperiodic crystals and their related concepts that usually are skipped. In this paper, several examples of the use of 3D printing are shown, including 2D and 3D examples of periodic and aperiodic ordered media; these are particularly useful to understand both conventional periodic crystals and quasicrystals. The STL files of the presented models are made available with the paper.