You have to break a few (hundred) eggs to make a good crystal
Space Science News home You have to break a few (hundred) eggs
to make a good crystal Bell curve shape to crystal quality may
point to best candidates for flight Sept. 20, 1999: Did you ever
ask the teacher to grade a tough test "on the curve"? What you
were asking was that the grades be adjusted so that a "C" fell
under the part of the curve where most of your classmates had
scored. A few were to the left and got a D or F; and few were to
the right and got a B or an A. Right: To the crystallographer,
this may not be a diamond but it's just as priceless. A lysozyme
crystal grown in orbit looks great under a microscope, but the
real test is X-ray crystallography. The colors are caused by
polarizing filters. Links to 549x379-pixel, 69KB JPG. Credit:
NASA/Marshall. That's basically how the bell curve works. In
nature, objects and events quite often can be grouped along a
bell curve. In a population of adult animals, most will be
around the same size.