Published articles establish the fact that vibration or other inhomogeneous strain greatly increases the ability of a crystal to diffract x‐rays. The present article gives experimentally determined relations between integrated intensity and strain for the rather simple case of static bending. All measurements were made on quartz plates, but a wide range of geometrical and crystalline parameters was covered nevertheless. In some cases, the integrated intensity for extreme bending was more than 20 times that from the unbent crystal. An approximate theory is developed which agrees well enough with the measurements to serve as a means of computing the effects of other types of strain or of other combinations of crystalline parameters. A qualitative study of vibrating crystalline plates is also described briefly.