Summary:
- A unit cell is the smallest portion of a crystal lattice that shows the three-dimensional pattern of the entire crystal.
- A crystal can be thought of as the same unit cell repeated over and over in three dimensions.
- There are three different types of unit cells in the cubic crystal system: simple cubic, face-centered cubic, and body- centered cubic.
- Unit cells occur in many different varieties, such as rhombohedral, hexagonal, triclinic and simple and base-centered.