Clueless about Reciprocal Lattice

[serverxeon]

Hi,

I'm a college student in Singapore...

Currently doing some research on carbon nanotubes, and so happened one of the honors student in the same lab said something about reciprocal lattice after seeing my experimental results.

I went to search more about it, but i am totally clueless. All the vectors, h-bar, wavelength... I am confused! All I know is X-ray will diffract in the direct lattice to give you... the reciprocal lattice? Or am i wrong?

So can anyone give me a crash course or something? Thanks!
Brief intro, or a link to something darn simple will be good!

 

[malawi_glenn]

The reciprocal lattice is the spatial lattice in momentum space.

So it is representing what's happening in scattering and makes it a lot easier to calculate stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocal_lattice

http://www.teknik.uu.se/ftf/education/ftf1/forelasningar/forelasningar_huvud_sidan.html