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"A Quasicrystal Construction Kit," by Ivars Peterson. Science News, 23 January 1999, pages 60-61.
The discovery of quasicrystals presented scientists with a puzzling class of materials. The atoms of these metal alloys are neither arranged in neat rows, as in crystals, nor scattered randomly, as in glass. Recently, Paul Steinhardt and Hyeong-Choi Jeong proposed a novel mathematical model that promised to shed light on the construction of quasicrystals.
Extending the work of other researchers, who first considered the tilings of Roger Penrose, Steinhardt and Jeong postulated that neighboring clusters in a quasicrystals share atoms. Moreover, the model they created predicts that quasicrystals have a simplicity more like that of crystals than was previously recognized.
This model has been compared to electron microscope data and found to have a remarkably precise correspondence.
--- Benjamin Stein
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