yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Mirrors And The Fourth Dimension


less than 1m read
·Nov 10, 2024

Mirrors do not show us a fourth dimension, but they do show us what a fourth dimension could do to us. First, notice that some things are the same as their mirror image, but some things are not. These two shapes are similar, but they cannot be rotated to look identical, to be superimposable on each other. This is called being chiral.

A chiral shape and its mirror image are called anatomorphs. These two shapes are anatomorphs in two dimensions. No amount of two-dimensional rotations will ever make them superimposable. To do that, I'll need to smash one of them inside out, turn it into its own mirror image, or rotate it in a third, higher dimension.

If I place a sticker here and face that side away from me, notice that the mirror inverts the object, just like a rotation through a higher dimension. The side of the real object that's furthest from me becomes the side of the virtual object that's closest to me. So, what would I look like if I was rotated around a plane in a fourth spatial dimension and then brought back? I would look like that.

More Articles

View All
Grizz Quiz: How Much Do You Know About Grizzly Bears? | Short Film Showcase
Maybe they’re your worst nightmare, or perhaps they bring a smile to your face. Grizzly bears are famous for triggering a whole range of different emotions, most of them passionate. You might have asked you a couple of questions. Let me start with this on…
Michael Burry: The 'Greatest Bubble of All Time' Just Burst (recent tweets explained)
The quote “greatest bubble of all time has started to burst, and it’s not done yet,” according to Michael Burry. Burry made his name correctly predicting the crash of the US housing market during the lead-up to the global financial crisis. This crash was …
15 RULES of MONEY
Ah, money. Some people say it makes the world go round. Some people chase it tirelessly, like a hamster running on a wheel. Some people speak about money, and others actually have it. Money doesn’t care about your self-esteem, about your religion, about w…
Ray Dalio on The Big Debt Cycle
Just frame for us your thoughts on debt for a second. How do you think about debt as an absolute construct or a relative construct, especially sovereign debt? You know, there is a US debt, but then there are also every other 182 countries who have a ton o…
Worked example: Calculating the mass of a substance in a mixture | AP Chemistry | Khan Academy
We’re told that a 0.450 gram potassium supplement contains 22 percent potassium by mass. The potassium is present in the supplement as potassium chloride, which has a molar mass of 74.55 grams per mole. How many grams of potassium chloride are in the pota…
TIL: How to Play Matchmaker for Beautiful, Endangered Birds | Today I Learned
[Music] Make fun, cringe! I’m monogamous. When a cup of cranes is together, they are likely to stay together for the rest of their lives. But unfortunately, in my country, Wanda, most of the cranes are hunted and sold to people. They won’t have the mini …