Stained Glass Hypercube

No, not that crappy movie. Today’s Math-Art was found, actually by accident. This photo of a hypercube - well, a 3-dimensional representation of what a tesserect is supposed to be - was made by Jayson’s father-in-law. It’s made with stained glass. Naturally, I found this in Jayson’s excellent blog, Hypercubed.

A tesserect is 4-dimensional cube (much like saying a cube is a 3-dimensional square). One way of seeing it, is that the insides of the tesserect is larger than the outsides, much like the Doctor’s TARDIS. The blue area represents the volume inside the red cube, while the red cube is the actual cube you see on the outside.

It is hard to perceive a hypercube, but just as we can draw 2D representations of a 3D cube, we can make 3D representations of a 4D hypercube - a tesserect.

I actually quite like the idea of having the ability to perceive 4 or more dimensions. Imagining multidimensional n-gons will not be so hard if we all had that ability. But until we humans attain the ability to perceive n dimensions, we’ll stick to the representation of it. To this extent, I think that the stained glass hypercube that Jayson’s father-in-law made is damn cool. Makes me want a new father-in-law.

And if you’re more adventurous, you may want to listen to David Morgan’s explanation of the tesserect to normal laymen like you and I.