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.

The U.S. Interest Rate Problem Just Flipped (Jerome Powell Changes Stance)

Work and power | Physics | Khan Academy

View All

3d curl intuition, part 1

Hello everyone. So, I’m going to start talking about three-dimensional curl, and to do that, I’m going to start off by taking the two-dimensional example that I very first used when I was introducing the intuition. You know, I talked about fluid flow, and…

It's better to be alone than wish you were

In my experience, people often see loners as outliers—people who, for some reason, don’t mesh well with the rest. They’re often seen as having traits or qualities that somehow don’t align with the group’s norms. There are indeed cases in which this is tru…

Carolynn Levy and Kirsty Nathoo - Startup Investor School Day 1

All right, this next session is actually one of my very favorites because there’s so much mystery in the fundamentals of how you actually do a startup investment, what it really means, and how it works. There are no two people who are greater experts in t…

Rescue Scenarios with Better Technology | Breakthrough

Hi, I’m Tim Maloney, Vice President of Operations here at Guardian Centers. Guardian Centers was built in response to historical events. Hurricane Katrina and Sandy would be on the forefront of the decision-making process. We have set up national exercis…

Space Telescopes Maneuver like CATS - Smarter Every Day 59

[Music] Hey, it’s me D, and welcome back to Smarter Every Day! So you are probably well aware of the awesome science that comes out of space telescopes, but what you might not be aware of is the awesome science that goes into making these things work. Fo…

Worked example: Derivative of cos_(x) using the chain rule | AP Calculus AB | Khan Academy

Let’s say we have the function f of x, which is equal to cosine of x to the third power. We could also write it like this: cosine of x to the third power. We are interested in figuring out what f prime of x is going to be equal to. So, we want to figure o…

Mirrors And The Fourth Dimension

More Articles