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
Taken Hostage While Rock Climbing | Nat Geo Live
( Intro music ) About a week into our expedition, a rebel group from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan moved through the valley, and they saw us 1,000 feet up on this big wall. They saw this as this opportunity. And so, we awoke one morning to bullets fl…
How Coca Leaves Become Cocaine | Trafficked with Mariana van Zeller
[music playing] [speaking spanish] I’m not going to lie, it’s always a rush getting access to these clandestine worlds. The cocaine pit, the starting point for such a storied black market trade, ranks up there. But as the reporter high wears off, I realiz…
Why Tik Tokers Are BROKE
9.2 million followers, 70 million likes, 100 million plus, right? It’s just how much I’ve made. This is KSI, massive content creator, huge following, partially owns Prime, which just became the UFC’s official drink, among other things. Despite its massive…
Ordering rational numbers compared to an average | Grade 8 (TX) | Khan Academy
We’re told four friends completed a 5 km run. Their average time to complete the run was 24 minutes. To compare their times, they created a table that shows the difference between each person’s time and the average time, with negative numbers representing…
The Secret Life of Plants | Podcast | Overheard at National Geographic
I’m looking at what you might call a classic National Geographic image. It’s a scene of one of the rainiest places on earth in its monsoon season. It’s somewhere deep in a rainforest. There’s a lush tapestry of thin brown tree trunks and rich green leaves…
YC SUS: Michael Seibel and Eric Migicovsky discuss How to Launch an MVP
Okay, we’re live. Hi, my name is Eric. I’m the course facilitator at Startup School. Hi, I’m Michael. I’m a partner at Y Combinator and a helper. Yeah, our volunteer today to help answer your questions. So thanks very much for joining in! We’ve got a bun…