Question

In the powder method the crystal is reduced to a very fine powder Why?

Answer 1

In this method, a mineral is ground up to a fine powder. In the powder, are thousands of grains that have random orientations. With random orientations we might expect most of the different atomic planes to lie parallel to the surface in some of the grains. Thus, by scanning through an angle θ of incident X-ray beams form 0 to 90o, we would expect to find all angles where diffraction has occurred, and each of these angles would be associated with a different atomic spacing.