Re: A question about mirrors

[Abhishek Roy <fingerslip@YAHOO.COM>]

From: Glenn A. Carlson <gcarlson@MAIL.WIN.ORG>
> > With a little manipulation,
> > I could easily convince myself there were only 2 forms which could not be
> > super-imposed. But this doesn't me closer to a definition for a similae
> > demonstration for *any* object.
> [snip]
>
> One practical way to convince yourself that there is a one-to-one
> correspondence between an object and its mirror image:
>
> Suppose an object had two possible mirror images.  Which image would
> you see if you placed the object in front of a mirror?

John S. Denker's post covers this and

From: Michael Edmiston <edmiston@BLUFFTON.EDU>
> I certainly agree with Glenn Carlson... an object has only one mirror
image.
> If the object's one mirror image can be rotated to a position that allows
> the image to be superimposed on the object, then the object is not chiral
> (not handed).  If the object's one mirror image cannot be rotated to a
> position that allows the image to be superimposed on the object, then the
> object is chiral (handed).

> If you have not done so, I urge you to place an object in front of a
mirror,
> then construct a new object that looks identical to the mirror image of the
> first object.  No matter how you orient the first object in front of the
> mirror, you will always construct the same mirror-image object.  Try
various
> objects and see which are superimposable and which are not.

with much more clarity then I could have achieved. The problem lies with the
circular definition of terms like 'enantiomorph', 'chirality' and
'handedness' wrt mirrors. If we could define them independently then (I
presume) that it could be applied to mirrors and John Denker's V and W
mirrors could be shown to be non-existent or degenerate into identities.
With the above reasoning you
certainly could not rule them out; it might even be that enormously
complicated
objects have an arbitrary number of enantiomorphs.





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