Make a DNA diffraction with a laser pointer

I came across this blog recently and thought you'd like to read it too.

Try this at home is a blog written by Mark Lorch, a chemistry lecturer at the University of Hull. He has some great stuff to try at home with the kids, check out his Knex DNA model. My son and I made the DNA replication fork with Okazaki fragments, Mark points to at Mount Sinai!

The DNA diffraction post tries to demonstrate the physics behind the data that allowed Watson and Crick to work out the famous molecule's structure. The X-ray diffraction image taken by Rosalind Franklin was crucial to the discovery. Read Watson's book for a history of the discovery, and his addendum to Rosalind Franklin.

Here is the image from Mark's blog. Follow this link to the experiment...