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An object that is not chiral is said to be achiral. A chiral object and its mirror image are said to be enantiomorphs. The word chirality is derived from the Greek χείρ (cheir), the hand, the most familiar chiral object; the word enantiomorph stems from the Greek ἐναντίος (enantios) 'opposite' + μορφή (morphe) 'form'.
Chirality (/ k aɪ ˈ r æ l ɪ t i /) is a property of asymmetry important in several branches of science. The word chirality is derived from the Greek χείρ (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 (not to be confused with ...
Chirality can be defined in two or three dimensions. It can be an intrinsic property of an object, such as a molecule, crystal or metamaterial. It can also arise from the relative position and orientation of different components, such as the propagation direction of a beam of light relative to the structure of an achiral material.
In stereochemistry, prochiral molecules are those that can be converted from achiral to chiral in a single step. [1] [2] An achiral species which can be converted to a chiral in two steps is called proprochiral. [2] If two identical substituents are attached to an sp 3-hybridized atom, the descriptors pro-R and pro-S are used to distinguish ...
The four-dimensional point groups (chiral as well as achiral) are listed in Conway and Smith, [1] Section 4, Tables 4.1–4.3. Finite isomorphism and correspondences. The following list gives the four-dimensional reflection groups (excluding those that leave a subspace fixed and that are therefore lower-dimensional reflection groups).
The chiral symmetry transformation can be divided into a component that treats the left-handed and the right-handed parts equally, known as vector symmetry, and a component that actually treats them differently, known as axial symmetry. [2] (cf. Current algebra.) A scalar field model encoding chiral symmetry and its breaking is the chiral model.
The simplest chiral knot is the trefoil knot, which was shown to be chiral by Max Dehn. All nontrivial torus knots are chiral. The Alexander polynomial cannot distinguish a knot from its mirror image, but the Jones polynomial can in some cases; if V k ( q ) ≠ V k ( q −1 ), then the knot is chiral, however the converse is not true.
Homochirality is a uniformity of chirality, or handedness.Objects are chiral when they cannot be superposed on their mirror images. For example, the left and right hands of a human are approximately mirror images of each other but are not their own mirror images, so they are chiral.