Posted by Steve Simon on January 29, 2013, 3:26 pm, in reply to "Diatomic Chain"
Hi Thomas,
Yes this would require that you have some left-right asymmetry of your atoms! Admittedly a real one dimensional chain of two types of atoms atoms would not do this (since atoms are generally spherical). But you could imagine having a chain of two types of molecules instead, where the molecules are not left-right symmetric. In this case, the spring constant on the two sides could be different. Another possibility would be to have three different types of atoms A-B-C-A-B-C-A-B-C. The spring constant A-B is generally different from B-C is generally different from C-A.
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