What does a helix look like in diffraction?
Change the geometry of an idealized DNA double helix and watch how its fiber diffraction pattern responds.
Real space
The molecule
Reciprocal space
The diffraction pattern
Wider DNA pushes diffraction features toward the center because larger distances in real space correspond to smaller distances in reciprocal space.
10.0
base pairs per turn
0.00
relative 4th-layer intensity
0.294 Å⁻¹
base-stacking reciprocal spacing
This is an idealized teaching model of B-DNA fiber diffraction, not a pixel-for-pixel reconstruction of Photograph 51. It is designed to show how real-space dimensions map into reciprocal-space features.