Talk:Crystallography

Liquid Crystals Should be Added

I think a comment should be added in the introduction about liquid crystals and perhaps a separate section as well. Liquid crystals may not seem to be crystals to a traditional geologist, but they have the properties of crystals according to physicists. With the ever growing presence of liquid crystal displays (iPods, cell phones, gaming devices, computer screens, TVs), the average reader may end up on this page upon wondering how his iPod screen works only to be told that crystals are solid. 129.63.129.196 (talk) 16:04, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Article badly needs improvement

Among other things to be fixed:

1. Introduction (article lead) is way too long relative to the article; it has a hodgepodge of stuff that belongs in the body of the article, or should be deleted as redundant. See MOS:LEAD for guidelines on writing the intro; it is usually best to keep a minimal intro until the rest of the article is written and stable.
2. "Notation" doesn't belong here because it is too specialized; it should be merged into crystal structure. or deleted if it is redundant.
3. "Reference literature" probably should be called "Further reading", in accordance with Wikipedia article standards.
4. "Scientists of note" and "See also" are waaaaay too long. Their content is useful, but it should be placed into a new infobar template, something like the Geology one already at the end of the page.
5. I haven't even waded into the deeper content of the article, but suspect there is a lot of room for improvement.

Reify-tech (talk) 17:30, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Moved section on Women in x-ray crystallography

I have moved this section to X-ray crystallography, as it seems more appropriate there. Ldm1954 (talk) 19:26, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Split x-ray diffraction out of X-ray crystallography

I propose splitting X-ray diffraction out of X-ray crystallography, discussion started at Talk:X-ray crystallography#Split x-ray diffraction and crystallography. The two are not the same, and there are many areas of XRD where the focus is not on detailed determination of atomic positions. Examples are powder diffraction where comparison is made to known samples, SAXS and many more. There are many areas/pages where it is relevant to say "use XRD" but wrong to say use "X-ray crystallography This would also help to improve the current rambling X-ray crystallography page. Comments to the X-ray crystallography talk page please. Ldm1954 (talk) 07:51, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Biology section

Hi. I would like to discuss edits to the Biology section. I found it had some inaccuracies (e.g. saying that the double helix of DNA was found by x-ray crystallography (rather than fiber diffraction) and it referred to as x-ray crystallography as being the primary method for structural determination, which is on the way to being obsolete. I therefore added a qualifier about it being predicted to be surpassed by cryo-EM. This was subsequently removed as not being appropriate for the section. The article already mentioned neutron and electron diffraction, so I added a sentence on serial femtosecond crystallography. And added citations (which the page is flagged as needed). All of these edits were removed as being out of scope for the section, so I would like to clarify what should and shouldn't be included. At a minimum, I would like to restore the citations and fix the inaccurate statement about the double helix. Apologies for any problems called, as it was not my intent. Biochemlife (talk) 14:04, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

@Biochemlife, I just left you a note on your talk page which (crossing edits) responds to some of this.

The definition of "crystallography" is a bit vague, please check what IUCr says. For instance many would call the interpretation of fiber diffraction data crystallography (I would). For certain I would call cryo-EM part of crystallography, although that too is a bit contentious.

Please note that you cannot use Wikipedia as a source. Hence Protein Data Bank needs a source, just the Wikilink is not enough. Similarly your addition of the various codes needs sources if it is left as you have it rather than the redirect to a general article.

In terms of what goes here, of course one could have a book, and there are many. What I will argue should be here is enough to provide an overview and point towards other Wikipedia pages for more information. Some of the sections can thus be expanded, but with care I think. Ldm1954 (talk) 14:37, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

@Ldm1954 Thank you for the clarifications. As a novice editor, I am not always aware of some of the nuances of editing and was just trying to follow the way things were when I arrived to edit. For example, the list of software programs was already there - I just added one to the list. To avoid refbombing, should I change the list of specific programs (what was previously there when I started editing): Many computer programs for molecular visualization have been developed for visualizing biological molecular structures? Apologies again for any problems. Biochemlife (talk) 14:43, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

N.B., the serial crystallography probably is better in X-ray Diffraction. That page also needs work, although I think it is a bit better. You may want to look at Electron Microscope which is not wonderful, but I think better. I am biased, but I think Electron diffraction is quite good. That page is what should be the target in terms of sourcing.

Crossing edits. I would go back to the "Many computer..." as it satisfies the requirements for a "Good Article", WP:GA? (which are quite turgid). Ldm1954 (talk) 14:45, 29 May 2025 (UTC)