A polycrystalline sample should contain thousands of crystallites. Therefore, all possible diffraction peaks should be observed.
• For every set of planes, there will be a small percentage of crystallites that are properly oriented to diffract (the plane perpendicular bisects the incident and diffracted beams).
• Basic assumptions of powder diffraction are that for every set of planes there is an equal number of crystallites that will diffract and that there is a statistically relevant number of crystallites, not just one or two.