Handedness
In human biology, handedness is an individual's preferential use of one hand, known as the dominant hand, due to it being stronger, faster or more Fine motor skill, dextrous. The other hand, comparatively often the weaker, less dextrous or sim ...
is a human attribute reflecting the unequal distribution of fine motor skill between the left and right hands.
Handedness may also refer to:
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Chirality
Chirality is a property of asymmetry important in several branches of science. The word ''chirality'' is derived from the Greek (''kheir''), "hand", a familiar chiral object.
An object or a system is ''chiral'' if it is distinguishable from ...
, Greek for ''handedness'', used to describe similar concepts in other fields:
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Chirality (chemistry)
In chemistry, a molecule or ion is called chiral () if it cannot be superposed on its mirror image by any combination of rotation (geometry), rotations, translation (geometry), translations, and some Conformational isomerism, conformational ch ...
, a property of molecules having a non-superimposable mirror image
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Chirality (electromagnetism)
300px, The direction of current flow and induced magnetic flux follow a "handness" relationship
The term chiral describes an object, especially a molecule, which has or produces a non-superposable mirror image of itself. In chemistry, such a m ...
, an electromagnetic propagation in chiral media
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Chirality (mathematics)
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 rotations and translations alone. An object that is not chiral is said to be ...
, the property of a figure not being identical to its mirror image
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Chirality (physics)
A chiral phenomenon is one that is not identical to its mirror image (see the article on mathematical chirality). The spin of a particle may be used to define a handedness, or helicity, for that particle, which, in the case of a massless particl ...
, when a phenomenon is not identical to its mirror image
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Sinistral and dextral
Sinistral and dextral, in some scientific fields, are the two types of chirality (" handedness") or relative direction. The terms are derived from the Latin words for "left" (''sinister'') and "right" (''dexter''). Other disciplines use different ...
, terms in biology and geology
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Orientation (vector space)
The orientation of a real vector space or simply orientation of a vector space is the arbitrary choice of which ordered bases are "positively" oriented and which are "negatively" oriented. In the three-dimensional Euclidean space, right-handed ...
, an asymmetry that makes a reflection impossible to replicate by means of a simple rotation
* Handedness of a
helix
A helix () is a shape like a corkscrew or spiral staircase. It is a type of smooth space curve with tangent lines at a constant angle to a fixed axis. Helices are important in biology, as the DNA molecule is formed as two intertwined helices, ...
, a spiral structure
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Handedness of screw threads, springs, or propellers, in mechanics and engineering
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