Why Do Mirrors Reverse Left and Right?
Answer: Mirrors don’t reverse left and right and they don’t reverse up and down. Wouldn’t that be kind of funny if I just stopped here? But you know I can’t.
I like Feynman’s explanation as well.
swans on tea
Just another SFN Blogs site
Mirror symmetry reverses the signs of one coordinate axis. A mirror ceiling flips you upside-down. Parity reverses all three axes to obtain upside down and inside out. However, simple point arrays can be non-identical mirror images (chiral, opposite shoes) that cannot be named for handedness by any rule, even in principle.
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/schwartz.png
The molecule has tetrahedral symmetry – point group T not T_h or T_d! It must be chiral.
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/schwart3.png
Name the handedness of each of the central five carbons, in yellow.
Flat chiral centers are Officially impossible in 3-D. R2C=CR2 where “R” is a chiral center such as -CHFCl and Rs are homochiral. Both sp2-hybridized olefinic carbons are trigonal planar and chiral centers, for a plane of symmetry cannot pass through a chiral center by definition. Chemical nomenclature, though rigorously mathematically derived, cannot be complete (hello Godel!).
Physical theory is fundamentally incomplete. The Standard Model and SUSY emerge from postulated vacuum mirror symmetries. There is nothing requiring chemically and macroscopically identical, opposite geometric parity atomic mass distributions to validate the Equilvalence Principle. Noether’s theorems do not act upon absolutely discontinuous symmetry parity. Crystallography supplies single crystals in 11 pairs of enantiomorphic space groups. Chose examples in the lowest symmetry pairs. Gravitation and particle theories can be selectively falsified – without contradiction of any prior observation – in existing apparatus,
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/erotor1.jpg
Two geometric parity Eotvos experiments.
String theory, the Higgs, and SUSY have no empirical validation because the maths are rigorous but a founding postulate is non-physical. The vacuum is mirror-symmetric toward massless photons but not toward mass. THIS IS CRAZY TALK… unless it works (re Yang and Lee). Somebody should look. If not now, then after the LHC protractedly finds nothing.