Abstract
When you take a tour through a natural history museum with a mineral collection you will notice that crystals exist in an incredible variety of shapes. Almost no crystal looks like another with regard to its outer shape, that is, the morphology (Greek μορφή, morphé = form, shape). They range from thin, long, needlelike crystals to chunky blocks, bizarre-looking tufts grown together, and also flat, columnar, dandruff-like or cubic crystals can be found. In ◘ Fig. 2.1 a small selection of different crystals is shown.
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Notes
- 1.
There is no equivalent term of “Tracht” in English; the same term “crystal habit” is applied to both. In this book we will still use both, because it is important to differentiate between both descriptors (see text).
- 2.
The English terms obverse and reverse are originally terms from the coinage system and refer to the front or back of a coin. In a figurative sense, one could say that the obverse and reverse setting of the rhombohedron centering are two sides of the same coin.
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Hoffmann, F. (2020). Crystal Shapes and Bravais Lattices. In: Introduction to Crystallography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35110-6_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35110-6_2
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