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.

2015 AP Calculus AB/BC 3cd | AP Calculus AB solved exams | AP Calculus AB | Khan Academy

Types of studies | AP Statistics | Khan Academy

View All

Surviving the Storm - Behind the Scenes | Life Below Zero

We are here to document the lives of people living in Alaska. The harsh reality is the environment we’re up against. It makes it tough to do our job. Get out of there, working on Life Below Zero can be very dangerous. Guns here, cameras here, never know w…

This 18th Century Gold Rush Changed How the World Pans for Gold | National Geographic

Gold is the most powerful metal on earth, and Russia is one of the world’s leading suppliers of it. It all began in 1745 when a peasant named Tiara Fade Markov, while looking for crystal, found something else: a tiny gold speck inside a piece of quartz. H…

Human Extinction

Hey, Vsauce. Michael here. Do you want to be infected with Ebola without having to leave your own home or deal with other people? Well, you might be in luck. You can already download an Ebola virus genome. Right here on the Internet, right now. And if you…

How Surfing Lead One NatGeo Explorer to The Depths of The Ocean | National Geographic

My first experience with the ocean started out as a surfer. I just loved being in the water. I loved riding waves, I loved the energy of the ocean, and there was no cost to entry to surfing. You know, once I had a surfboard, I could just ride waves all da…

Torque and kinematics conceptual example

We are told a student hangs blocks with different masses from a pulley of mass m and radius r and releases them from rest. The student measures the time of the fall t and the magnitude of the angular velocity omega sub f when the block reaches a distance …

Are These the Oldest Fossils Ever Found? | National Geographic

Through laser imaging of the samples, we were able to identify the microfossils as the oldest known microfossils on Earth. The microfossils we discovered are about 300 million years older than the previously thought oldest microfossils. So, they are withi…

Mirrors And The Fourth Dimension

More Articles