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symmetry
(redirected from bilateral symmetry)

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Medical, Legal, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia 0.01 sec.

symmetry

Exact likeness in shape about a given line (axis), point, or plane. A figure has symmetry if one half can be rotated and/or reflected onto the other. (Symmetry preserves length, angle, but not necessarily orientation.) In a wider sense, symmetry exists if a change in the system leaves the essential features of the system unchanged; for example, reversing the sign of electric charges does not change the electrical behaviour of an arrangement of charges.

Line symmetry

In the diagram, the letter A has one line of symmetry, or mirror line, shown by the dotted line. This is the line of reflection:

Rotational symmetry

The diagram shows that the shape may be rotated about O into three identical positions. It has rotational symmetry of order three:

Transformation of shapes can also take place by translation, rotation, reflection, and enlargement.



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? Mentioned in ? References in periodicals archive
 
Body adornment--such as tattoos, henna designs, and hairstyles--and jewelry--such as fibulae-draw attention to the human form, playing off the balance of the body's bilateral symmetry (Prussin 1995:189).
One such indicator is the degree of deviation from bilateral symmetry of faces and bodies.
Now, Abraham is the first major canvas in which Newman departs from bilateral symmetry (yet without entirely freeing his composition from its hold) and the one in which he begins to investigate the power of lateral expansion.
 
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