In crystallography, a glide plane is a symmetry operation describing how a reflection in a plane, followed by a translation parallel with that plane, may leave the crystal unchanged.
Glide planes are noted by a, b or c, depending on which axis the glide is along. There is also the n glide, which is a glide along the half of a diagonal of a face, and the d glide, which is along a fourth of either a face or space diagonal of the unit cell. The latter is often called the diamond glide plane as it features in the diamond structure.
Read more about Glide Plane: Formal Treatment
Famous quotes containing the words glide and/or plane:
“Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. Ghostlike we glide through nature, and should not know our place again.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“At the moment when a man openly makes known his difference of opinion from a well-known party leader, the whole world thinks that he must be angry with the latter. Sometimes, however, he is just on the point of ceasing to be angry with him. He ventures to put himself on the same plane as his opponent, and is free from the tortures of suppressed envy.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)