Sometimes I'm stupid...

Actually, it's probably "a lot of times" and not "sometimes"...

Anyways, I've recently been reading textbooks. I took a trip to the library last week to look for some background information for my overview (in topics such as recrystallization and grain growth, or x-ray diffraction). While I am familiar with these topics, I find that I am not knowledgeable. They are primarily things I have learned in class and also see throughout the research papers I've read. Although classes generally only try to cover just enough of the basics to understand the field. While research papers, tend to focus on one particular area, and explain how they have built upon that one specific subject in the field. A combination of these two is generally inadequate for seeing the "big picture" in the field. In particular, as you become more and more specialized, and you tend to focus on a particular topic, you lose sight of all the other research going on. (Although Google Scholar and ResearchGate have started providing me updates of recently published journal articles, which in some ways does help keep one seeing everything going on in the topic).

A lot of times as I'm reading through these textbooks, there will be some small piece of information in which everything clicks; all the various things I've been reading in research papers all fall together in how they are related, or linked up. The other times, I realize I've overlooked something significant or forgotten, or just never learnt. My latest lesson was in diffraction.

I've always been under the impression that electromagnetic waves interacted with the atoms in a crystalline lattice. This not entirely false, but more accurately, the electrons in the electron clouds of an atom interact with the electromagnetic wave (there is negligible interaction from the nucleus). This electromagnetic interaction is also different for x-ray diffraction or electron diffraction. While the obvious differences are things such as wavelength and absorption, x-ray scattering is an indirect interaction, while electron scattering is direct.

Hopefully I'll have some more time to start posting again. We've been rushing for some results recently, which we finally believe we've gotten to an adequate point to write on. So the next few days will be devoted to writing again, in which I have another post for that.