9

SYMMETRY

Look around you — you may find many objects that catch your
attention. Some such things are shown below:

Flower Butterfly

Rangoli Pinwheel

There is something beautiful about the pictures above.

The flower looks the same from many different angles. What
about the butterfly? No doubt, the colours are very attractive. But
what else about the butterfly appeals to you?
In these pictures, it appears that some parts of the figure are
repeated and these repetitions seem to occur in a definite pattern.
Can you see what repeats in the beautiful rangoli figure? In the

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rangoli, the red petals come back onto themselves when the flower
is rotated by 90˚ around the centre and so do the other parts of the
rangoli.
What about the pinwheel? Can you spot which pattern is repeating?
 ook at the hexagon first.
Hint: L
Now, can you say what figure repeats
along each side of the hexagon? What
is the shape of the figure that is stuck to
each side? Do you recognise it? How do
these shapes move as you move along the
boundary of the hexagon? What about
the other pictures — what is it about
those structures that appeals to you and
what are the patterns in those structures
that repeat? Clouds
On the other hand, look at this picture
of clouds. There is no such repetitive pattern.
We can say that the first four figures are symmetrical and the last one is
not symmetrical. A symmetry refers to a part or parts of a figure that
are repeated in some definite pattern.

Taj Mahal Gopuram

What are the symmetries that you see in these beautiful structures?

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 Symmetry

9.1 Line of Symmetry

Figure (a) shows the picture of a blue triangle with a dotted line.
What if you fold the triangle along the dotted line? Yes, one half
of the triangle covers the other half completely. These are called
mirror halves!

(a) (b)

What about Figure (b) with the four puzzle pieces and a dotted line
passing through the middle? Are they mirror halves? No, when we fold
along the line, the left half does not exactly fit over the right half.
A line that cuts a figure into two parts that exactly overlap when
folded along that line is called a line of symmetry of the figure.

Figure it Out
1. Do you see any line of symmetry in the figures at the start of the
chapter? What about in the picture of the cloud?
2. For each of the following figures, identify the line(s) of symmetry
if it exists.

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Figures with more than one line of symmetry

Does a square have only one line of symmetry?
Take a square piece of paper. By folding, find all its lines of symmetry.

Fold 1

Fold 2

Fold 3

Fold 4

Here are the different folds giving different lines of symmetry.

• Fold the paper into half vertically.
• Fold it again into half horizontally (i.e., you have folded it
twice). Now open out the folds.
Vertical Fold

Horizontal Fold

Again fold the square into half (for a third time now), but this
time along a diagonal, as shown in the figure. Again, open it.

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 Symmetry

Fold it into half (for the fourth time), but this time along the other
diagonal, as shown in the figure. Open out the fold.
Is there any other way to fold the square so that the two halves
overlap? How many lines of symmetry does the square shape have?
Thus, figures can have multiple lines of symmetry. The figures
below also have multiple lines of symmetry. Can you find them all?

We saw that the diagonal of a square is also a line of symmetry.

Let us take a rectangle that is not a square. Is its diagonal a line of
symmetry?
First, see the rectangle and answer this
question. Then, take a rectangular piece of
paper and check if the two parts overlap by
folding it along its diagonal. What do you
observe?

Reflection
So far we have been saying that when we fold a figure along a line of
symmetry, the two parts overlap completely. We could also say that
the part of the figure on one side of the line of symmetry is reflected
by the line to the other side; similarly, the part of the figure on the
other side of the line of symmetry is reflected to the first side! Let us
understand this by labeling some points on the figure.
The figure shows a square with its corners labeled A, B, C and D.
Let us first consider the vertical line of symmetry. When we reflect

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the square along this line, the points B, C on the right get reflected to
the left side and occupy the positions occupied earlier by A, D. What
happens to the points A, D? A occupies the position occupied by B and
D that of C!

A B

D C

What if we reflect along the diagonal from A to C? Where do

points A, B, C and D go? What if we reflect along the horizontal line of
symmetry?
A figure that has a line or lines of symmetry is thus, also said to have
reflection symmetry.

Generating shapes having lines of symmetry

So far we have seen symmetrical figures and asymmetrical
figures. How does one generate such symmetrical figures? Let us
explore this.
Ink Blot Devils
You enjoyed doing this earlier in Class 5. Take a piece of paper. Fold
it in half. Open the paper and spill a few drops of ink (or paint) on
one half.
Now press the halves together and then open the paper again.
• What do you see?
• Is the resulting figure symmetric?
• If yes, where is the line of symmetry?
• Is there any other line along which it can be folded to produce
two identical parts?
• Try making more such patterns.

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 Symmetry

Paper Folding and Cutting

Here is another way of making symmetric shapes!
In these two figures, a sheet of paper is
folded and a cut is made along the dotted
line shown. Draw a sketch of how the paper
will look when unfolded.
Do you see a line of symmetry in this
figure? What is it?
Make different symmetric shapes by folding and cutting.
There are more ways of folding and cutting pieces of paper to get
symmetric shapes!
Use thin rectangular coloured
paper. Fold it several times and
create some intricate patterns by
cutting the paper, like the one shown
here. Identify the lines of symmetry
in the repeating design. Use such
decorative paper cut-outs for festive
occasions.

 Figure it Out
Punching Game
The fold is a line of symmetry. Punch holes at different locations of
a folded square sheet of paper using a punching machine and create
different symmetric patterns.

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1. In each of the following figures, a hole was punched in a folded

square sheet of paper and then the paper was unfolded. Identify
the line along which the paper was folded.
Figure (d) was created by punching a single hole. How was the
paper folded?

a. b. c. d.

2. Given the line(s) of symmetry, find the other hole(s):

a. b. c. d. e.

3. Here are some questions on paper cutting.

Consider a vertical fold. We represent it this way:

Vertical Fold

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Similarly, a horizontal fold is represented as follows:

Horizontal Fold

4. After each of the following cuts, predict the shape of the
hole when the paper is opened. After you have made your
prediction, make the cutouts and verify your answer.

a. b.

c.

d.

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5 Suppose you have to get each of these shapes with some folds and
a single straight cut. How will you do it?

a. The hole in the centre is a square.

b. The hole in the centre is a square.

Note: For the above two questions, check if the 4-sided figures in
the centre satisfy both the properties of a square.

6. How many lines of symmetry do these shapes have?

a.

b. A triangle with equal sides and equal angles.

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 Symmetry

c. A hexagon with equal sides and equal angles.

7. Trace each figure and draw the lines of symmetry, if any:

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8. Find the lines of symmetry for the kolam below.

9. Draw the following.

a. A triangle with exactly one line of symmetry.
b. A triangle with exactly three lines of symmetry.
c. A triangle with no line of symmetry.
Is it possible to draw a triangle with exactly two lines of symmetry?
10. Draw the following. In each case, the figure should contain at least
one curved boundary.
a. A figure with exactly one line of symmetry.
b. A figure with exactly two lines of symmetry.
c. A figure with exactly four lines of symmetry.
11. Copy the following on squared paper. Complete them so that the
blue line is a line of symmetry. Problem (a) has been done for you.

(a) (b) (c)

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 Symmetry
(a) (b) (c)

(d) (e) (f)

Hint: For (c) and (f ), see if rotating the book helps!

12. Copy the following drawing on squared paper. Complete each one
of them so that the resulting figure has the two blue lines as lines
of symmetry.

A B C
(a) (b) (c)
A B C

D E F

D
(d) E
(e) F
(f)

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13. Copy the following on a dot grid. For each figure draw two more
lines to make a shape that has a line of symmetry.

9.2 Rotational Symmetry

The paper windmill in the picture looks
symmetrical but there is no line of symmetry!
However, if you fold it, the two halves will not
exactly overlap. On the other hand, if you rotate
it by 90° about the red point at the centre, the
windmill looks exactly the same.
We say that the windmill has rotational
symmetry.
When talking of rotational symmetry, there is always a fixed
point about which the object is rotated. This fixed point is called the 180˚
centre of rotation.
Will the windmill above look exactly the same when rotated
through an angle of less than 90°?
No!
An angle through which a figure can be rotated to look exactly the 180˚
same is called an angle of rotational symmetry, or just an angle of
symmetry, for short.

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 Symmetry

For the windmill, the angles of symmetry are 90° (quarter turn),
180° (half turn), 270° (three-quarter turn) and 360° (full turn).
Observe that when any figure is rotated by 360°, it comes back to its
original position, so 360° is always an angle of symmetry.
Thus, we see that the windmill has 4 angles of symmetry.
Do you know of any other shape that has exactly four angles of
symmetry?
How many angles of symmetry does a square have? How much
rotation does it require to get the initial square?
We get back a square overlapping with itself after 90° of rotation.
This takes point A to the position of point B, point B to the position
of point C, point C to the position of point D, and point D back to the
position of point A. Do you know where to mark the centre of rotation?
Line after
rotation

A B B C
Imaginary
reference line Initial
position

D C A D
Square after
rotation

What are the other angles of symmetry?

C D D A A B
Line after 180 o Initial 270 o
Initial
360o
rotation position position

B A C B C D
Line after
rotation

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Example: Find the angles of symmetry of the following strip.

Solution: Let us rotate the strip in a clockwise direction about its centre.

A rotation of 180° results in the figure above. Does this overlap

with the original figure.
No. Why?
Another rotation through 180° from this position gives the original
shape.
This figure comes back to its original shape only after one
complete rotation through 360°. So, we say that this figure does not
have rotational symmetry.

Rotational Symmetry of Figures with

Radial Arms
Consider this figure, a picture with 90O
4 radial arms. How many angles of
symmetry does it have? What are they?
Note that the angle between adjacent
central dotted lines is 90°.
Can you change the angles between
the radial arms so that the figure still has
4 angles of symmetry? Try drawing it.
To check if the figure drawn indeed has 4 angles of symmetry,
you could draw the figure on two different pieces of paper. Cut out
the radial arms from one of the papers. Keep the figure on the paper
fixed and rotate the cutout to check for rotational symmetry.
How will you modify the figure above so that it has only two
angles of symmetry?

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 Symmetry

Here is one way:

We have seen figures having 4 and 2 angles of symmetry. Can we

get a figure having exactly 3 angles of symmetry? Can you use radial
arms for this?
Let us try with 3 radial arms as in the figure below. How many
angles of symmetry does it have and what are they?
Here is a figure with three radial arms.

Trace and cut out a copy of this figure. By rotating the cutout over
this figure determine its angles of rotation.
We see that only a full turn or a rotation of 360° will bring the figure
back into itself. So this figure does not have rotational symmetry as
360 degrees is its only angle of symmetry.
However, can anything in the figure be changed to make it have
3 angles of symmetry?

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Can it be done by changing the angles between the dotted lines?

If a figure with three radial arms should have rotational symmetry,
then a rotated version of it should overlap with the original. Here
are rough diagrams of both of them.
If these two figures must overlap, what can you tell about the
angles?

C A B C

B A

Observe that ∠A must overlap ∠B, ∠B must overlap ∠C and ∠C

must overlap ∠A.
So, ∠A = ∠B = ∠C. What must this angle be?
We know that a full turn has 360 degrees. This is equally distributed
amongst these three angles. So each angle must be 360°
3
= 120°.
So, the radial arms figure with 3 arms shows rotational symmetry
when the angle between the adjacent dotted lines is 120°. Use paper
cutouts to verify this observation.
Now how many angles of rotation does the figure have and what
are they?

Initial After 120° After 240° After 360°

position rotation (120° + 120°) (120° + 120°+ 120°)
rotation rotation
Note: The colours have been added to show the rotations.

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 Symmetry

Let us explore more figures.

Can you draw a figure with radial arms that has a) exactly 5
angles of symmetry, b) 6 angles of symmetry? Also find the angles of
symmetry in each case.
Hint: Use 5 radial arms for the first case. What should the angle
between two adjacent radial arms be?
Consider a figure with radial arms having exactly 7 angles
of symmetry. What will be its smallest angle of symmetry? Is the
number of degrees a whole number in this case? If not, express it as
a mixed fraction.
Let us find the angles of symmetry for other kinds of figures.
Figure it Out
1. Find the angles of symmetry for the given figures about the point
marked •.

(a) (b) (c)

2. Which of the following figures have more than one angle of

symmetry?

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3. Give the order of rotational symmetry for each figure:

Let us list down the angles of symmetry for all the cases above.
• Angles of symmetry when there are exactly 2 of them: 180°, 360°.
• Angles of symmetry when there are exactly 3 of them: 120°,
240°, 360°.
• Angles of symmetry when there are exactly 4 of them: 90°,
180°, 270°, 360°.
Do you observe something common about the angles of symmetries
in these cases? The first set of numbers are all multiples of 180. The
second are all multiples of 120. The third are all multiples of 90.
In each case, the angles are the multiples of the smallest angle.
You may wonder and ask if this will always happen. What do you
think?

True or False
• Every figure will have 360 degrees as an angle of symmetry.

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 Symmetry

• If the smallest angle of symmetry of a figure is a natural number

in degrees, then it is a factor of 360.
Is there a smallest angle of symmetry for all figures? It turns out
that this is the case for most figures, except for the most symmetric
shapes like the circle, whose symmetries we now discuss.

Symmetries of a circle
The circle is a fascinating figure. What happens when you rotate a
circle clockwise about its centre? It coincides with itself. It does not
matter what angle you rotate it by! So, for a circle, every angle is an
angle of symmetry.

Now take a point on the rim of the circle and join it to the centre.
Extend the segment to a diameter of the circle. Is that diameter
a line of reflection symmetry? It is. Every diameter is a line of
symmetry!
Like wheels, we can find other objects around us having rotational
symmetry. Find them. Some of them are shown below:

Fan Flower Wheel

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Figure it Out
1. Colour the sectors of the circle below so that the figure has i)
3 angles of symmetry, ii) 4 angles of symmetry, iii) what are
the possible numbers of angles of symmetry you can obtain
by colouring the sectors in different ways?

2. Draw two figures other than a circle and a square that have both
reflection symmetry and rotational symmetry.
3. Draw, wherever possible, a rough sketch of:
a. A triangle with at least two lines of symmetry and at least two
angles of symmetry.
b. A triangle with only one line of symmetry but not having
rotational symmetry.
c. A quadrilateral with rotational symmetry but no reflection
symmetry. Try
d. A quadrilateral with reflection symmetry but not having This
rotational symmetry.
4. In a figure, 60° is the smallest angle of symmetry. What are
the other angles of symmetry of this figure?
5. In a figure, 60° is an angle of symmetry. The figure has two angles
of symmetry less than 60°. What is its smallest angle of symmetry?
6. Can we have a figure with rotational symmetry whose smallest
angle of symmetry is:
a. 45°?
b. 17°?

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7. This is a picture of the new Parliament Building in Delhi.

a. Does the outer boundary of the picture have reflection

symmetry? If so, draw the lines of symmetries. How many are
they?
b. Does it have rotational symmetry around its centre? If so, find
the angles of rotational symmetry.
8. How many lines of symmetry do the shapes in the first shape
sequence in Chapter 1, Table 3, the Regular Polygons, have? What
number sequence do you get?
9. How many angles of symmetry do the shapes in the first shape
sequence in Chapter 1, Table 3, the Regular Polygons, have? What
number sequence do you get?
10. How many lines of symmetry do the shapes in the last shape
sequence in Chapter 1, Table 3, the Koch Snowflake sequence,
have? How many angles of symmetry?
11. How many lines of symmetry and angles of
symmetry does Ashoka Chakra have?

Playing with Tiles

a. Use the colour tiles given at the end of the
book to complete the following figure so that it has exactly 2 lines
of symmetry.
b. Use 16 such tiles to make figures that have exactly:
1 line of symmetry
2 lines of symmetry
c. Use these tiles in making creative symmetric designs.

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 Symmetry

Game
Draw a 6 by 6 grid. Two players
take turns covering two
adjacent squares by drawing Not allowed
a line. The line can be placed
either way: horizontally or
vertically. The lines cannot
overlap. The game goes on till
a player is not able to place any
more lines. The player who is
not able to place a line loses.
With what strategy can one play to win this game?

Summary
 When a figure is made up of parts that repeat in a definite pattern,
we say that the figure has symmetry. We say that such a figure is
symmetrical.
 A line that cuts a plane figure into two parts that exactly overlap
when folded along that line is called a line of symmetry or axis of
symmetry of the figure.
 A figure may have multiple lines of symmetry.
 Sometimes a figure looks exactly the same when it is rotated by an
angle about a fixed point. Such an angle is called an angle of symmetry
of the figure. A figure that has an angle of symmetry strictly between
0 and 360 degrees is said to have rotational symmetry. The point
of the figure about which the rotation occurs is called the centre of
rotation.
 A figure may have multiple angles of symmetry.
 Some figures may have a line of symmetry but no angle of symmetry,
while others may have angles of symmetry but no lines of symmetry. Some
figures may have both lines of symmetry as well as angles of symmetry.

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