Symmetry
The trefoil knot is chiral, in the sense that a trefoil knot can be distinguished from its own mirror image. The two resulting variants are known as the left-handed trefoil and the right-handed trefoil. It is not possible to deform a left-handed trefoil continuously into a right-handed trefoil, or vice-versa. (That is, the two trefoils are not isotopic.)
Though the trefoil knot is chiral, it is also invertible, meaning that there is no distinction between a counterclockwise-oriented trefoil and a clockwise-oriented trefoil. That is, the chirality of a trefoil depends only on the over and under crossings, not the orientation of the curve.
Read more about this topic: Trefoil Knot
Famous quotes containing the word symmetry:
“What makes a regiment of soldiers a more noble object of view than the same mass of mob? Their arms, their dresses, their banners, and the art and artificial symmetry of their position and movements.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)