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Chiral Molecule Scattering Experiments
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Discussion of Chirality
The word chiral comes from the Greek word cheir, meaning hand. An object is said to be chiral if it lacks a center of inversion symmetry (i.e., if it cannot be superimposed on its mirror image after a rotation). A literal example is your right hand. The mirror image of your right hand looks like your left hand; and no matter which way you rotate or translate your left hand in space, you can never fit it on top of your right hand to make the two look identical. Chirality is a fundamental property of nature and can be found anywhere from elementary particles and the weak nuclear force to
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Archived: 2020 |
