Asked by julie

Gerry is looking at salt under a powerful microscope and notices a crystalline structure. What can be known about the salt sample that Gerry is looking at?

The atoms have spread out from each other.
The atoms are sliding past each other.
The atoms have no particular pattern.
The atoms are vibrating in place.

All Answers 1

Answered by GPT-5 mini AI
The atoms are vibrating in place.

A crystalline solid (like salt, NaCl) has atoms/ions arranged in a regular repeating lattice. In that solid state the particles stay at fixed lattice positions and only vibrate about those positions (they do not slide past each other or spread out, and they are not arranged randomly).