Summary and Transparencies for Class 13 - Thursday, February 28, 2002

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Introduction

"One night in a dream my mother came and presented me with a purple robe made of silk. When I lifted it, both sleeves seemed very heavy, and on examining them I found an old mirror, five or six inches in diameter, in each sleeve. The reflection from the mirror in the right sleeve penetrated to my heart and vital organs. My own mind, mountains and rivers, the great earth seemed serene and bottomless. The mirror in the left sleeve, however, gave off no reflection whatsoever. Its surface was like that of a new pan that had yet to be touched by flames. But suddenly I became aware that the luster of the mirror from the left sleeve was innumerable times brighter than the other. After this, when I looked at all things, it was as though I were seeing my own face."

Zen Master Hakuin (1686 - 1768), Supplement to Orategama III, P.B. Yampolsky, trans.

Today's Class

We finished our discussion of mirror symmetry. Not in the Supplementary Notes but talked about in class were:

• The distinction between left and right in Eastern religious traditions.
• Molecules whose mirror-images are not the same are called chiral. In living systems most chiral molecules are found in only one of the two possible forms. However, some chiral molecules are found in both forms in living systems. Examples include carvone, for which one form is found in caraway while the other is found in spearmint, and thalidomide, which in one form is a sedative while the other causes birth defects.

We then began a discussion of AntiMatter. Supplementary Notes on this topic have been prepared; the html version is available here and the pdf version is available here. We discussed the material through the Dirac's Theory of Antimatter section.