Dan Shechtman

High school (ages 12+)
Science & Technology

Name:

Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/dan-shechtman

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. When was Dan Shechtman born?January 24, 1941
2. Where was Dan Shechtman born?Tel Aviv, Mandatory Palestine (now Israel)
3. What is Dan Shechtman known for?Discovery of the icosahedral phase, leading to the field of quasicrystals
4. Who discovered Dan Shechtman?April 8, 1982
5. What did Dan Shechtman discover?He discovered quasicrystals, a new kind of crystal that has a 5‑fold symmetry pattern that was thought impossible before.
6. Why was his discovery surprising to other scientists?Scientists believed crystals could only have 2, 3, 4, or 6‑fold symmetry, so seeing a 5‑fold pattern made many think he was looking at defects or mistakes.

Quasicrystals: Crystalline solids exhibiting long-range orientational order but lacking translational periodicity, characterized by symmetries like five-fold rotation.
Crystallography: The scientific discipline concerned with the determination of the arrangement of atoms within crystals, including their geometric structure and bonding.
Periodicity: The property of repeating at regular intervals, a fundamental characteristic of conventional crystalline structures.
Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM): A microscopy technique in which a beam of electrons is transmitted through a specimen, used to create images of the specimen's internal structure.