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Separate grains show up distinctly when photographs of polycrystalline rafts such as figures 5a to 5c, plates 9 and 10, and figures 12a to 12e, plates 14 to 16, are viewed obliquely. With suitable lighting, the floating raft of bubbles itself when viewed obliquely resembles a polished and etched metal in a remarkable way.

It often happens that some 'impurity atoms', or bubbles which are markedly larger or smaller than the average, are found in a polycrystalline raft, and when this is so a large proportion of them are situated at the grain boundaries. It would be incorrect to say that the irregular bubbles make their way to the boundaries; it is a defect of the model that no diffusion of bubbles through the structure can take place, mutual adjustments of neighbours alone being possible. It appears that the boundaries tend to readjust themselves by the growth of one crystal at the expense of another till they pass through the irregular atoms.

4. Dislocations

When a single crystal or polycrystalline raft is compressed, extended, or otherwise deformed it exhibits a behaviour very similar to that which has been pictured for metals subjected to strain. Up to a certain limit the model is within its elastic range. Beyond that point it yields by slip along one of the three equally inclined directions of closely packed rows. Slip takes place by the bubbles in one row moving forward over those in the next row by an amount equal to the distance between neighbours. It is very interesting to watch this process taking place. The movement is not simultaneous along the whole row but begins at one end with the appearance of a 'dislocation', where there is locally one more bubble in the rows on one side of the slip line as compared with those on the other. This dislocation then runs along the slip line from one side of the crystal to the other, the final result being a slip by one 'inter-atomic' distance. Such a process has been invoked by Orowan, by Polanyi and by Taylor to explain the small forces required to produce plastic gliding in metal structures. The theory put forward by Taylor (1934) to explain the mechanism of plastic deformation of crystals considers the mutual action and equilibrium of such dislocations. The bubbles afford a very striking picture of what has been supposed to take place in the metal. Sometimes the dislocations run along quite slowly, taking a matter of seconds to cross a crystal; stationary dislocations also are to be seen in crystals which are not homogeneously strained. They appear as short black lines, and can be seen in the series of photographs, figures 12a to 12 e, plates 14 to 16. When a polycrystalline raft is compressed, these dark lines are seen to be dashing about in all directions across the crystals.