Nanometre-sized particles are of considerable current interest because of t
heir special size-dependent physical properties. Debye-Scherrer diffraction
patterns are often used to characterize samples, as well as to probe the s
tructure of nanoparticles. Unfortunately, the well known 'Scherrer formula'
is unreliable at estimating particle size, because the assumption of an un
derlying crystal structure (translational symmetry) is often invalid. A sim
ple approach is presented here which takes the Fourier transform of a Debye
-Scherrer diffraction pattern. The method works well on noisy data and when
only a narrow range of scattering angles is available.