THE FOURTH DIMENSION SIMPLY EXPLAINED

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While this student was amusing himself with his two-and four-dimensional beings, another student, an investigator in the realm of pure mathematics, had found that the ideas and the language of four dimensions were exceedingly useful. By drawing two perpendicular lines as in Fig. 4, he was able to locate every point in their plane, by giving the distances from each of the two lines. Like the schoolboy who begins his

Figure 4
problem, "Let x equal the number of men," the investigator lets x represent the distance of the point from the vertical line and y the distance from the horizontal line. He then, for the time being, concentrates his attention on the letters x and y, just as the schoolboy manipulates the x in his problem, without at all times keeping in mind that x means men. It is an easy extension by means of three infinite planes to represent any point in space by three numbers, x , y, and z. Again, the investigator, after letting these letters represent the point he is considering, deals only with the letters, and at times pays little attention to what they represent. But there are other things besides points which may be represented by numbers. He may wish to discuss spheres in space. Four numbers are needed to locate a sphere in space, three to locate the center and one to represent the radius. Again, if he wishes to locate a line of given length, he will use three numbers to locate one end of the line; and since the other end
Page 160 can then move on a sphere, he will need two more numbers, or five in all, to represent the line. In any problem he assigns a letter to represent each of his unknown numbers, whether the number helps to give position or not. These letters he uses impartially in his algebraic manipulations. He has called all the points in the plane a "twodimensional aggregate," for any point is represented by two numbers. The points in space make up a threedimensional aggregate. The totality of spheres and of straight lines of given length make up four-and fivedimensional aggregates respectively.

These two students are types of the two classes of investigators who have studied the subject of dimensions. The first delights in placing before us those creatures of his imagination, those two and four-dimensional people with their imaginary environment. Just as the dramatist delights in presenting to us a hero who acts, under the conditions laid down in the story, in a manner consistent with his character as presented by the author, so this writer takes pleasure in bringing before our minds his creatures, whose sole characteristics are lack or oversupply of dimensions. The second investigator is the mathematician who found it a real help in his investigations to use the ideas and language of four or more dimensions. He did not say that a four-or fivedimensional material world existed. He did not believe that our universe was part of an actual four-dimensional space, nor did he ask others to believe it. It was but another example of the mathematician's delight in generalization. In this way he introduced the idea of negative numbers Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com