Receive emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens. Symmetry also has an aesthetic meaning, although this is ...

Superconductors are among the most puzzling materials in physics. They conduct electricity with zero resistance, but only ...

👉 Learn how to reflect points and a figure over a line of symmetry. Sometimes the line of symmetry will be a random line or ...

To begin to understand what mathematicians and physicists see in the abstract structures of symmetries, let’s start with a familiar shape. We are fond of saying things are symmetric, but what does ...

We are fond of saying things are symmetric, but what does that really mean? Intuitively we have a sense of symmetry as a kind of mirroring. Suppose we draw a vertical line through the middle of a ...

Symmetry attracts us. Studies comparing people’s reactions to different faces have shown, for example, that they find highly symmetrical faces more attractive than less symmetrical faces. The symmetry ...