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Rotational symmetry, also known as radial symmetry in geometry, is the property a shape has when it looks the same after some rotation by a partial turn. An object's degree of rotational symmetry is the number of distinct orientations in which it looks exactly the same for each rotation.
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 above ideas lead to the useful idea of invariance when discussing observed physical symmetry; this can be applied to symmetries in forces as well.. For example, an electric field due to an electrically charged wire of infinite length is said to exhibit cylindrical symmetry, because the electric field strength at a given distance r from the wire will have the same magnitude at each point on ...
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]
Geometrically, the graph of an odd function has rotational symmetry with respect to the origin, meaning that its graph remains unchanged after rotation of 180 degrees about the origin. Examples of odd functions are x, x 3, sin(x), sinh(x), and erf(x).
The twelve rotations form the rotation (symmetry) group of the figure. In group theory , the symmetry group of a geometric object is the group of all transformations under which the object is invariant , endowed with the group operation of composition .
In a symmetry group, the group elements are the symmetry operations (not the symmetry elements), and the binary combination consists of applying first one symmetry operation and then the other. An example is the sequence of a C 4 rotation about the z-axis and a reflection in the xy-plane, denoted σ(xy) C 4 .
A regular n-sided polygon has rotational symmetry of order n. All vertices of a regular polygon lie on a common circle (the circumscribed circle); i.e., they are concyclic points. That is, a regular polygon is a cyclic polygon.