C3v Group Operations

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The sliders for operations 1, 2, and 3 perform actions of the symmetry group , as indicated by labels above the three arrows. The group
is isomorphic with the symmetric group
and the dihedral group
. You can explore the results of applying successive operations 1 and 2 of the symmetry group
, using tricolored equilateral triangles. The same result can be obtained in a single step using some operation 3. For example, the operation
followed by
gives the same result as the operation
. In standard group theory notation, this is written right-to-left as the symbolic product
. Note that
, showing that symmetry operations do not, in general, commute.
Contributed by: S. M. Blinder (March 2011)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
Snapshots
Details
Snapshot 1: the group operations designated
Snapshot 2: , showing noncommutativity of group operations
Snapshot 3: every element has an inverse
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