dihedral angle

dihedral angle (plural dihedral angles)

1. (geometry) The angle between two planes.
   • 1830, Pierce Morton, Geometry, Plane, Solid and Spherical, Baldwin and Cradock, London, page 136,

     Any two dihedral angles are to one another as the angles contained by perpendiculars drawn as in the last proposition.

   • 1981, Jane S. Richardson, The Anatomy and Taxonomy of Protein Structure, C. B. Afinson, John T. Edsall, Frederic M. Richards (editors), Advances in Protein Chemistry, Volume 34, page 173,

     The remaining dihedral angles are the source of essentially all the interesting variability in protein conformation.

   • 2009, Reza Abbaschian, Lara Abbaschian, Robert E. Reed-Hill, Physical Metallurgy Principles, Cengage Learning, page 176,

     The significance of small dihedral angles is readily apparent in Fig. 6.20, where the shape of the intersection is shown for angles of 10° and 1°.