Visual Symmetry

Symmetry is as simple or as complicated as we are ready to absorb it in everything around us. From flowers to bridges, buildings, coke machines, and snowflakes; from molecules to walnuts, fences, pine cones, and sunflowers; from music to children's drawings; from hubcaps to bank logos, propellers, wallpaper decorations, and pavements, we recognize it if we walk around with open eyes and an open mind. This book provides aesthetic pleasure and covert education, immersing the reader in both the familiar and the unknown and leading always to unexpected discoveries.

The authors, world-renowned scientists, have already produced a dozen books on symmetry for professionals as well as lay persons, for grownups as well as children, in English, Russian, German, Hungarian, and Swedish languages. They provide this attractive account of symmetry in few words and many -- as many as 650 -- images in full color from the most diverse corners of our globe. An encounter with this book will open up a whole new experience for the reader, who will never look at the world with the same eyes as before.

Contents:

• Introduction
• Mirror Symmetry
• Chirality
• Multiple Mirrors
• Rotational Symmetry
• Shape and Movement
• Polyhedra
• Repetitions
• Helical Symmetry
• Planar Patterns
• Crystals
• Antisymmetry
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments