What is scale model?

Question

What is scale model?
i have to do project in my chemistry class about a birthstone
and the teacher said dont make a poster but scale model. and it had to be a 3-d model of my birthstone???

what does that mean ??? scale model and how it looks like?

Answer 1

Your birthstone is probably a semi-precious crystal material - most of them are. So your teacher is saying to make a model that represents the crystaline structure of the material. Normally, scale model means that distances are all accurate but scaled down (a model car is smaller than the real thing) or scaled up - a model of a crystal is larger than the original, by millions of times.
Depending on the grade level of your class, the teacher probably does not expect an exact scale model - one where molecules 2.2 Angstoms apart are 2.2 cm apart, but one that shows the rhomboid, or cubic, or ???, structure of the material. You do what that means, I hope.

Answer 2

It might be a model of the crystal structure of the material in the stone. In that case, the model could be millions of times bigger than the atoms that you wish to represent.

To try to get used to the idea, study the lattice structure of diamond. It is based on a tetrahedron.

Answer 3

Chris is wrong -- it's the same only larger.

Get the chemical formula and look for info about how the crystal is put together. Diamonds are easy -- carbon in a crystal lattice.

Ruby and sapphire are the mineral corundum with chromium (for ruby) or titanium and iron (sapphire).

The mineral beryl with chromium is an emerald; with iron it's called aquamarine.

I hope it's not pearl. That's a toughie.

Answer 4

a model of someting that is proportional but just a smaller model of it

Answer 5

Like the original but smaller...

Answer 6

boo