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Fig. 7 – The left-handed orientation is shown on the left, and the right-handed on the right. Fig. 8 – The right-handed Cartesian coordinate system indicating the coordinate planes. Once the x- and y-axes are specified, they determine the line along which the z-axis should lie, but there are two possible orientations for this line.
For left-handed coordinates, the above description of the axes is the same, except using the left hand; and the ¼ turn is clockwise. Interchanging the labels of any two axes reverses the handedness. Reversing the direction of one axis (or three axes) also reverses the handedness.
If a left-handed Cartesian coordinate system is used, with x directed to the right but y directed down, R(θ) is clockwise. Such non-standard orientations are rarely used in mathematics but are common in 2D computer graphics, which often have the origin in the top left corner and the y-axis down the screen or page. [2]
The vector cross product, used to define the axis–angle representation, does confer an orientation ("handedness") to space: in a three-dimensional vector space, the three vectors in the equation a × b = c will always form a right-handed set (or a left-handed set, depending on how the cross product is defined), thus fixing an orientation in ...
Helices can be either right-handed or left-handed. With the line of sight along the helix's axis, if a clockwise screwing motion moves the helix away from the observer, then it is called a right-handed helix; if towards the observer, then it is a left-handed helix.
A coordinate line with all other constant coordinates equal to zero is called a coordinate axis, an oriented line used for assigning coordinates. In a Cartesian coordinate system , all coordinates curves are lines, and, therefore, there are as many coordinate axes as coordinates.
The rotation of the crystal planes can be right or left-handed, again producing opposite optical activities. On the other hand, amorphous forms of silica such as fused quartz, like a racemic mixture of chiral molecules, has no net optical activity since one or the other crystal structure does not dominate the substance's internal molecular ...
The left-handed orientation is shown on the left, and the right-handed on the right. The orientation of a real vector space or simply orientation of a vector space is the arbitrary choice of which ordered bases are "positively" oriented and which are "negatively" oriented.