Past exam of the physics A course of the University of Cambridge 2011 Paper 1 Section A 4 Solution 2026-10-20
A conventional body-centred cubic cell contains two atoms, so its edge obeys . Taking gives . The neighbour shells of a body-centred cubic lattice have eight nearest neighbours that are at ; the six next-nearest neighbours lie along the cell axes. Thus the next-nearest-neighbour distance is .