Editing Chirality (mathematics) (section)

{{short description|Property of an object that is not congruent to its mirror image}}
[[File:2 parallel footprints.png|thumb|The footprint here demonstrates chirality. Individual left and right footprints are chiral '''enantiomorphs''' in a plane because they are mirror images while containing no mirror symmetry individually.]]
In [[geometry]], a figure is '''chiral''' (and said to have '''chirality''') if it is not identical to its [[mirror image]], or, more precisely, if it cannot be mapped to its mirror image by [[Rotation (mathematics)|rotation]]s and [[Translation (geometry)|translation]]s alone. An object that is not chiral is said to be ''achiral''.

A chiral object and its mirror image are said to be '''enantiomorphs'''. The word ''chirality'' is derived from the Greek {{lang|grc|χείρ}} (cheir), the hand, the most familiar chiral object; the word ''enantiomorph'' stems from the Greek {{lang|grc|ἐναντίος}} (enantios) 'opposite' + {{lang|grc|μορφή}} (morphe) 'form'.