Rosalind Franklin's X-ray photo of DNA as an undergraduate optical diffraction experiment

Abstract

Rosalind Franklin's X-ray diffraction patterns of DNA molecules rendered the important clue that DNA has the structure of a double helix. The most famous X-ray photograph, Photo 51, is still printed in most Biology textbooks. We suggest two optical experiments for undergraduates that make this historic achievement comprehensible for students by using macromodels of DNA and visible light to recreate a diffraction pattern similar to Photo 51. In these macromodels, we replace the double helix both mathematically and experimentally with its two-dimensional (flat) projection and explain why this is permissible. Basic optical concepts are used to infer certain well-known characteristics of DNA from the diffraction pattern.