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The NaCl crystal tends to cleave along the faces of the cubic unit cell. A portion of a structure that when repeated by moving it parallel to its edges by the length of an edge generates the entire crystal structure (without overlapping) is called a unit cell. When atoms are located on the corners, edges, or faces of the unit cell, only fractions of those atoms belong in the unit cell. The "unit cell" shown in this animation is actually the smallest collection of spheres that contains a single unit cell
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