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A drawing of a butterfly with bilateral symmetry, with left and right sides as mirror images of each other.. In geometry, an object has symmetry if there is an operation or transformation (such as translation, scaling, rotation or reflection) that maps the figure/object onto itself (i.e., the object has an invariance under the transform). [1]
Symmetry occurs not only in geometry, but also in other branches of mathematics. Symmetry is a type of invariance: the property that a mathematical object remains unchanged under a set of operations or transformations. [1] Given a structured object X of any sort, a symmetry is a mapping of the object
Symmetry in physics has been generalized to mean invariance—that is, lack of change—under any kind of transformation, for example arbitrary coordinate transformations. [17] This concept has become one of the most powerful tools of theoretical physics, as it has become evident that practically all laws of nature originate in symmetries.
The symmetry group of a square belongs to the family of dihedral groups, D n (abstract group type Dih n), including as many reflections as rotations. The infinite rotational symmetry of the circle implies reflection symmetry as well, but formally the circle group S 1 is distinct from Dih(S 1) because the latter explicitly includes the reflections.
Symmetry groups of Euclidean objects may be completely classified as the subgroups of the Euclidean group E(n) (the isometry group of R n). Two geometric figures have the same symmetry type when their symmetry groups are conjugate subgroups of the Euclidean group: that is, when the subgroups H 1, H 2 are related by H 1 = g −1 H 2 g for some g ...
In mathematics, a symmetry operation is a geometric transformation of an object that leaves the object looking the same after it has been carried out. For example, a 1 ⁄ 3 turn rotation of a regular triangle about its center, a reflection of a square across its diagonal, a translation of the Euclidean plane, or a point reflection of a sphere through its center are all symmetry operations.
In geometry, the symmetry set is a method for representing the local symmetries of a curve, and can be used as a method for representing the shape of objects by finding the topological skeleton. The medial axis , a subset of the symmetry set is a set of curves which roughly run along the middle of an object.
For any symmetry group containing a glide reflection, the glide vector is one half of an element of the translation group. If the translation vector of a glide plane operation is itself an element of the translation group, then the corresponding glide plane symmetry reduces to a combination of reflection symmetry and translational symmetry.