Traditionally, when one deals with crystals, the first property to be presented is the periodicity of the lattice, and all methods of study are based on this characteristic, which is considered essential. In fact, crystals differ from the molecules of finite size that are studied in chemistry, only in their extremely large number of particles. Furthermore, the existence of faces, which limit the spread of crystals in space, necessarily breaks the periodicity of the system. For these reasons it is natural to apply to crystals the concepts and methods that have been widely tested in the study...
Traditionally, when one deals with crystals, the first property to be presented is the periodicity of the lattice, and all methods of study are based ...