Frame from DNA diffraction animation

Diffractometer used by the Braggs

Bragg About Adelaide

Mark Pharoah, SA Museum

When a beam of X-rays is passed through a regular, crystalline substance, the X-rays are diffracted, and will form a pattern on a suitable recording surface. The actual structure of the crystalline substance may be determined by the correct interpretation of this diffraction pattern. The discovery of this technique was of extreme importance in the many fields of research which involve chemical and molecular structure.

William Henry Bragg and his son William Lawrence Bragg won a Nobel Prize in 1915 for their definitive work in X-ray crystallography. In 1886, W.H. was appointed the Elder Chair of Mathematics and Experimental Physics at the University of Adelaide, and in 1908, W. L. graduated from the same institution with a B. A. with First-Class Honours in Mathematics.

As part of an exhibition at the State Museum of South Australia, SAPAC developed a short presentation that covered the Braggs' use of X-ray diffraction in crystallography, its relevance to the deduction of the structure of DNA, and future prospects for crystallography in Australia.

This involved the creation of stereo computer-generated animations to represent X-ray diffraction by salt crystals and the crystalline form of DNA, and the processing of archival stereographic images for display in our VisLab. Scripting and presentation were done by SAPAC staff.

As part of the opening of the Bragg exhibition, a presentation of the show was attended by the Premier Mike Rann, the Hon. Dr. Jane Lomax-Smith, and Professor Baroness Susan Greenfield (SA Thinker-in-Residence at the time).

This show ran once daily on week-days, for six weeks during August-September 2005, and was held in the SAPAC VisLab.