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
Why Don't We Shoot Nuclear Waste Into Space?
Here in the Kotart Labs, we test very important ideas to see what happens when you blow things up or play with black holes. Many of you suggested that we look into an idea that sounds reasonable: shooting nuclear waste into space. It’s one of those concep…
Why you shouldn't vent anger (according to science and philosophy)
We may all be familiar with the irritation arising when something doesn’t go as we wish. We feel our heartbeat increasing and our muscles tensing. Our frustrations build up to the point of physical shaking, and we feel we’re about to explode. And so, when…
Khan Academy request for donations
Hi everyone, Sal Khan here from Khan Academy. As you might notice, I am back in the walk-in closet where, uh, Khan Academy first started. I am socially distanced like I’m sure many of you all are. I just wanted to give you a quick message because I know …
Eulers formula magnitude
In this video, we’re going to talk a bunch about this fantastic number e to the J Omega T. One of the coolest things that’s going to happen here, we’re going to bring together what we know about complex numbers and this exponential form of complex numbers…
She Summited Each Continent’s Highest Mountain To Empower Women | Nat Geo Live
I work for the women in my country who are facing crazy mountains without even having to step on a mountain. And I thought of a campaign to go climb the highest mountain of every continent in the world, knowing that the struggle in the mountain was so par…
Graphing logarithmic functions (example 1) | Algebra 2 | Khan Academy
We’re told the graph of y is equal to log base 2 of x is shown below, and I say graph y is equal to 2 log base 2 of negative x minus 3. So pause this video and have a go at it. The way to think about it is that this second equation that we want to graph i…