Hypercube
Wednesday, March 31, 2004 by gizzimo | Discussion: WinCustomize Talk
Reply #3 Wednesday, March 31, 2004 9:04 PM
Reply #4 Wednesday, March 31, 2004 9:10 PM
Well, there's no way to represent a 3 dimensional object in one dimension, other than as a line which would imply 0 extent for one dimension of the three making it therefore only a two dimensional object represented in one dimension.
So, how in thunderation is one going to represent a FOUR dimensional object in the only TWO dimensional medium these artists work in ????
Coooome ooon, gimme a break !
Your Pal,
John Stossel

P.S. I think I did see this "picture" of a hypercube or something 4 dimensional in a Scientific American, or the like, sometime in the last several months. Couldn't make heads or tails of it.
[Message Edited]
Reply #5 Wednesday, March 31, 2004 9:12 PM
Reply #6 Wednesday, March 31, 2004 9:14 PM
(if I may call you that without offense
)I would certainly encourage any attempts, regardless.
P.S. What I mean above is that I was composing my tongue-in-cheek tirade as citizen werewolf was making his suggestion. My longer post was NOT a response to his.
[Message Edited]
Reply #8 Wednesday, March 31, 2004 9:45 PM
Reply #9 Wednesday, March 31, 2004 9:46 PM
The Tesseract (or Hypercube)
A guided demonstration
http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/docs/outreach/4-cube/
The Tesseract
A look into 4-dimensional space
http://pw1.netcom.com/~hjsmith/WireFrame4/tesseract.html
Tesseract Facts
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Tesseract.html
Reply #10 Wednesday, March 31, 2004 10:30 PM
OK, another try.
Here is the hypercube theory explained with an animation:

Reply #12 Thursday, April 1, 2004 3:38 AM
Reply #13 Thursday, April 1, 2004 7:35 AM
Oh Cygnus, it's not from me. I grabbed it from a web site. 
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/7997/
All I did is turn the Flash into an animated GIF. :)
Reply #14 Thursday, April 1, 2004 9:22 AM
That's good Paxx, thanks for digging that up.Although I was tongue-in-cheek earlier, I had quite forgotten the technique of using another attribute, color being one of the most convenient, to represent an extra dimension. I should have known better, being and engineer and always having to cram mult-dimensional data onto 2 & 3-D charts.
[Message Edited]
Reply #15 Thursday, April 1, 2004 10:10 AM
Reply #16 Thursday, April 1, 2004 11:25 AM
Up/down 1D
left/right 2D
forward/backward 3D
upsilon/delta 4D
In the 4th dimension, there is no exterior or interior. If you are contained inside a hypercube and you try and go out one side of the hypercube, you'll appear at the other side (the train station in the 3rd Matrix installation is a 4 dimensional realm, When neo exist one side, he enters at the other in essence, there is no such thing as Entrance or Exit in the 4th dimension.) I am digressing here now, sorry.
Anyways, visualising a hypercube in our 3rd dimension is practically impossible (a 2D person [[eg a shadow]] cannot see a cube, only one side) so we can only perceive 'one' side of the hypercube (the cube within a cube perspective) the other perspectives are fortified angles, they are 'slices' of a 4D cube.
If you're going to try and design it, don't bother think about how it will look, because it will only be a wallpaper right? which means its only appropriate you worry about making the cube-within-a-cube look cool since you can only really 'see' a 4D cube when it's in motion, preferably 4D motion (upsilon and delta).
If anyone's interested in the 4th dimension such as I am, and you wish to try and understand/visualise 4D space, try and put it into perspective of a 2D person transitioning into the 3rd dimension, he would grow proportion.
Edwin Abbott wrote the book Flatland, describing how a 2D person saw a sphere enter his world (obviously it entered in slices since the 3rd dimensional aspect of the sphere is cross-sectioned through the surface of Flatland)
http://roark.ry4an.org/flatland/
and here's a fictional interview conducted by a human, with a hyperbeing (4 Dimensional person)
http://web.mit.edu/maiki/www/stories/hexa.html
Thanks.
Reply #17 Thursday, April 1, 2004 11:42 AM
http://cips02.physik.uni-bonn.de/ScienceSite/hypercubus/animator/main.html
Reply #19 Thursday, April 1, 2004 8:59 PM
| (imagine a sphere plunging through flatland, the flatlanders would only see cross-sections of the sphere, meaning they would only see a circle suddenly appear growing larger until it dissappears) |
Ooohh... be careful!! It would only look circular from the 3rd dimension (which flatlanders cannot move into)...
The following is from "Of the Nature of Flatland - Edwin A. Abbott (1838-1926)"
"Place a penny on the middle of one of your tables in Space
and leaning over it, look down upon it. It will appear a circle.
But now, drawing back to the edge of the table, gradually lower
your eye (thus bringing yourself more and more into the condition of
the inhabitants of Flatland), and you will find the penny becoming
more and more oval to your view, and at last when you have placed
your eye exactly on the edge of the table (so that you are,
as it were, actually a Flatlander) the penny will then have ceased
to appear oval at all, and will have become, so far as you can see,
a straight line."

Reply #20 Thursday, April 1, 2004 9:43 PM
Thus, the flat liners would see a sphere passing through their plan as a curved "surface" getting bigger and then smaller again....but it wouldn't appear as a line if the could percieve "depth" from them to the "surface" as we do.
....I think

Please login to comment and/or vote for this skin.
Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
- Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums and downloading skins.
- Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
- Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
- It's simple, and FREE!









Reply #1 Wednesday, March 31, 2004 7:57 PM