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:
“Novels so often provide an anodyne and not an antidote, glide one into torpid slumbers instead of rousing one with a burning brand.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“with the plane nowhere and her body taking by the throat
The undying cry of the void falling living beginning to be something
That no one has ever been and lived through screaming without enough air”
—James Dickey (b. 1923)