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Chirality is a property of symmetry important in several branches of science. The word ''chirality'' is derived from the Greek, ''χειρ'' (''kheir''), "hand", a familiar chiral object. An object or a system is chiral if it is distinguishable from its mirror image; that is, it cannot be superposed onto it. Conversely, a mirror image of an ''achiral'' object, such as a sphere, cannot be distinguished from the object. A chiral object and its mirror image are called enantiomorphs (Greek ''opposite forms'') or, when referring to molecules, enantiomers. A non-chiral object is called achiral (sometimes also amphichiral) and can be superposed on its mirror image. If the object non-chiral and is imagined as being colored blue and its mirror image is imagined as colored yellow, then by a series of rotations and translations the two can be superposed producing green with none of he original colors remaining. The term was first used by Lord Kelvin in 1893 in the second Robert Boyle Lecture at the Oxford University Junior Scientific Club which was published in 1894: Human hands are perhaps the most universally recognized example of chirality: The left hand is a non-superimposable mirror image of the right hand; no matter how the two hands are oriented, it is impossible for all the major features of both hands to coincide across all axes.〔Georges Henry Wagnière, ''On Chirality and the Universal Asymmetry: Reflections on Image and Mirror Image'' (2007).〕 This difference in symmetry becomes obvious if someone attempts to shake the right hand of a person using their left hand, or if a left-handed glove is placed on a right hand. In mathematics ''chirality'' is the property of a figure that is not identical to its mirror image. ==Mathematics== (詳細はmathematics, a figure is chiral (and said to have chirality) if it cannot be mapped to its mirror image by rotations and translations alone. For example, a right shoe is different from a left shoe, and clockwise is different from anti-clockwise. A chiral object and its mirror image are said to be enantiomorphs. The word ''enantiomorph'' stems from the Greek (enantios) 'opposite' + (morphe) 'form'. A non-chiral figure is called achiral or amphichiral. The helix (and by extension a spun string, a screw, a propeller, etc.) and Möbius strip are chiral two-dimensional objects in three-dimensional ambient space. The J, L, S and Z-shaped ''tetrominoes'' of the popular video game Tetris also exhibit chirality, but only in a two-dimensional space. Many other familiar objects exhibit the same chiral symmetry of the human body, such as gloves, glasses (where two lenses differ in prescription), and shoes. A similar notion of chirality is considered in knot theory, as explained below. Some chiral three-dimensional objects, such as the helix, can be assigned a right or left handedness, according to the right-hand rule. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Chirality」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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