Talk:Metachirality

Draft discussion

Comments: I don't have access to the Conway book (ref #1) but neither other reference appears to use the term "metachirality"--possible WP:OR problems with labeling them as such (and WP:NPOV identifying things as the general or nice-example ways). This term might be a neologism at this time? DMacks (talk) 10:14, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Response: About NPOV, note that this concerns a plain mathematical definition, with the intent to clarify an important distinction among chiral objects. A distinction that unfortunately is often misunderstood. If you look up John Horton Conway, then I think you can trust his authority on these matters. The name for this distinction may be a neologism, but currently there is no better name. The next step would be to incorporate a reference to metachirality from the articles on chirality and on space groups. On the latter page (where Conway is also referenced for his contributions), it would be helpful to use the term metachirality (to clarify the special status of 11 of the space groups). Wstomv (talk) 19:16, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Approved. --Gryllida (talk) 04:27, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Comments: The first sentence of the page is confusing: metachirality does not apply to the chiral object but to its symmetry group. It was defined by Conway and Smith : when the group of symmetries of a chiral object differs from the group of its mirror image, the group is metachiral. Example: there are 11 crystallographic space-groups among 219 which differ from their mirror images (so, there is total of 219+11=230 space groups); these 11 groups are called metachiral. This is also clear after reading p.353 of the book cited ref #1. As proposed above, the book of Conway and Smith should be cited.

References