Re: mirrors in D-space

[Abhishek Roy <fingerslip@YAHOO.COM>]

From: John S. Denker <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>

[snip]
> a) Under "normal" conditions, for an object of dimensionality d in a space
> of dimensionality D, the object can't be chiral if d is less than D -- you
> can always pick it up and flip it over.
>
> b) This implies that for any object it is the last dimension (the step
from
> d=D-1 to d=D) that breaks the symmetry.
>
> But this begs the question of how you prove statement (a).  Under what
> conditions does statement (a) hold?  Before you assert that statement (a)
> is obvious, be warned that it is not always true!  It's bad luck to prove
> things that aren't true.
        Why is a) not always true? If d < D then all the instances of a
object look the same - n'est ce pas? Proving it, is of course  another
matter, and I'm hoping someone can help me there.

Regards,
Abhishek




__________________________________________________

Do You Yahoo!?

Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger.

http://im.yahoo.com