Inorganic compounds packing symmetry

The first crystal structures to be solved were those of inorganic compounds, for which great help was found through considerations of how one could pack spheres into structures that minimized the magnitude of interstitial space [8]. In this approach, the crystal is built up from, spherical structural units that make contact with one another. Alternatively, one could consider the points of a lattice network to be inflated into spheres. As a result, all individual symmetry is removed from the individual particles, and the symmetry of the lattice structure follows from the fashion in which the spheres are arranged. 

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