Question about unit cells in minerals?
Answer:
Vectors within unit cells are useful because they denote a certain direction within a unit cell. Properties of a given material can be different when measured in different directions (this phenomenon is known as anisotropy).
A unit cell has axes labeled a, b, and c. A vector is usually written in the form [ a b c ] in whole numbers indicating how many units to move along each axis.
Vectors are not used so much to describe moving from one unit cell to another though. If you have a single crystal material, all the unit cells are aligned and the property will be the same in a given direction through the whole crystal.
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