Question

What letters of the English alphabet have reflectional symmetry (i.e. symmetry related to mirror reflection) about: both horizontal and vertical mirrors.

Answer 1

Hint: To solve this question, we should know that reflectional symmetry is a symmetry which we find after drawing the reflection of an image either vertically or horizontally or both. And when we consider the reflectional symmetry of the alphabets, then we can say that we will get the same shape of the alphabet after reflection.

Complete step-by-step answer:
In this question, we have been asked to write the English alphabets which show both horizontal and vertical reflectional symmetry. For that, we should know that mirror symmetry or reflectional symmetry is a symmetry which is obtained by drawing the mirror image.
We know that reflection of an image has a property that each point of reflection is at the same distance as in a real image. If we consider alphabets from A to Z then we need alphabets which read the same as the real alphabet even after the reflection.
So, we can say that the letters, H, I, O and X are the only four letters which show the horizontal and the vertical symmetry.

Note: Sometimes, we may end up writing the wrong alphabets by checking only one of the symmetry. So, to verify our answer, we can draw a vertical line and a horizontal line passing through the center of the alphabet, as shown below.

Here, we can see that the portion of the figure above and below the horizontal line of symmetry are the same and this is the same for vertical lines of symmetry. Hence, the alphabet has both horizontal and vertical symmetry.