ABSTRACT
In this book we help you understand the symmetries of things. In this chapter we look at some repeating patterns and introduce you to the way we think about them. We describe the four fundamental features of a repeating pattern in the plane (or on any surface!) and introduce the signature we use to record these features of the pattern.
The floral pattern to the left has many symmetries. For example, the pattern is left-right symmetric: it has the vertical mirror line shown on the left below.
