Saturday, January 16, 2010

Symmetry: 1794


Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
--From Songs of Innocence and of Experience--

There's something about symmetry that can make even mundane things seem extraordinary.

3 comments:

chickelit said...

Your bowl and chopsticks have approximate sigma point group symmetry.

Plenty of asymmetry in life, especially regarding molecules:

Who broke the mirror so long ago?

Jason (the commenter) said...

That would be an interesting way to set a table: modeling complex molecules using different shaped dishes and various utensils!

chickelit said...

Sorry about the bad link. There were a couple extra character in the address. link.

That would be an interesting way to set a table: modeling complex molecules using different shaped dishes and various utensils!

Take away the sticks and that bowl has C4v symmetry.

The hard one to get will be the plane of reflection parallel with the table, which moves an object from "C" to "D".