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
Jamming with Astronaut Chris Hadfield
Can I just ask you a question? Because we saw your guitar floating around in space there. What happened to that guitar? Where is it? Because that is a remarkable and unique guitar. It’s a Canadian guitar made by Larry Vay by John Larry Veo in Vancouver. …
Messages and morals | Reading | Khan Academy
Hello readers! Today I’d like to talk to you about the moral of the story. Which story? Well, we’ll get to that. First, what is a moral? It’s a lesson, usually about how you’re supposed to treat other people. I think we can say that if a story has a moral…
HOW TO STAY CALM & POSITIVE IN LIFE | MARCUS AURELIUS | STOICISM INSIGHTS
It’s difficult to realize that nearly 2,000 years ago, a Roman emperor confronted many of the same issues that we do today. Marcus Aurelius, a Stoic philosopher and statesman, struggled with uncertainty, authority, and the enormous constraints of empire. …
Moral realism doesn't help you (much)
Moral nihilism, uh, the belief that moral facts don’t exist, or at least that’s how I’m going to define it here. Lord Hawkeye gives the impression that he does believe the moral facts exist. I’m not certain that he really does. A couple of his remarks abo…
Introduction to polynomial division
Earlier in your algebraic careers, you learned how to multiply polynomials. So, for example, if we had (x + 2) times (4x + 5), we learned that this is the same thing as really doing the distributive property twice. You could multiply (x) times (4x) to ge…
Exclusive: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Describes the War With the US and How to End It
Minister Le, thank you for doing this. Um, do you believe the United States and Russia are at war with each other right now? I wouldn’t say so, and uh, in any case, this is not what we want. Uh, we would like to have normal relations with all our neighbo…