Four-Dimensional Rubik's Cube Craziness

[SheepFactory]

thanks , but no thanks. Spent enough time on gridlock already.

:)

[StateTheObvious]

Like America is not fat enough already.

[aurora]

Fun concept, wondeful idea (I survived the original Rubik's craze). However, well read my sig it says it all. I do have to admit I downloaded the source code to give it a quick peek.

[Gentle Fury]

ok, all i wanna know is.................what is with this new obsession with the term 4D?????????????? The fourth dimension is TIME!!!!!!!!!!! I'm sorry but this has been a mis-usage that has bothered me for some time, and now it is EVERYWHERE!! I thought it was cute when 4D boxing came out.....but now for some reason every 3D glasses movie is being called 4D........does watching the movie open a time space continuum or something, does it allow you to gaze into the past and/or future???

sorry, totally off topic, but its getting really annoying.

[Solesurvivor]

since when has time become the fourth dimension?? I mean ,1, 2 and 3D are about space and visualizing objects and then 4D should be time?? don't get that one

[coupon]

Here you go G.F. it's talking about 4d space, not time, which some call the 4th dimension, but i know what you mean about the glasses and crap like that.- http://tetraspace.alkaline.org/

[gmask]

>>>and there is also a running competition for the most efficient solution"



Mine solutiuon with the original Rubik's cube was to hit it with a hammer and then jam the pieces back together.. I eventually bought the book on how to solve it.



>>>since when has time become the fourth dimension?? I mean ,1, 2 and 3D are about space and visualizing objects and then 4D should be time?? don't get that one

Most matter does change over time so it make sense to me?? But what the heck is the 5th dimension??

[Marc Andreoli]

Originally posted by Gentle Fury
ok, all i wanna know is.................what is with this new obsession with the term 4D?????????????? The fourth dimension is TIME!!!!!!!!!!!

Actually, time is only one way to 'visualize' the fourth dimension, just like the first 3 can be visualized with 3 directions in space...if you look at it at an abstract mathematical level, all dimensions are equal and there is no limit to the amount of dimensions :bounce:

nobody likes a smartass, I know...:wavey:

[DaneStogner]

if a cube represents the 3rd dimension, a square the 2nd, a line 1st, and a point 0... what would be the logical step for the 4th dimension?
Lets put this in tems we are all familiar with... an animation. Lets call our character "Bob". Bob has been animated, he is a virtual 3d character in virtual 3d space.. but for out purposes, it IS 3d. A sigle moment in time.. or a frame of the animation is 3d, Bob's just cool that way.
In our animation software... this frozen moment in 3d space is a keyframe. on your graph editor, this third dimension is represented as a point(0). as the 3d changes through time, Bob ages or checks his mail, the graph editor displays a line(1)
in maya's timeline, a keyframe is shown as a line (1) while the animation as a whole is many lines one after the other, or a rectangle (2). In both instances of lower dimensional representation... time is represented as the "dimension" following the 3rd. Bob in a still frame is 3d. Bob exsisting in time is 4d. (where a keyframe is the point that extends into a line once time is added)
I like to think that where a cg still is technically 2d.. the artist works in the 3rd dimension virtually.
I also like to think that makes animators and filmmakers artists of the 4th dimension.

Marc Andreoli: yer right... just tryin to explain to soulsurvivor how time can be considered the 4th dimension.

[Solesurvivor]

but if you look at it mathematically, isn't the 4th dimension the one with the complex numbers(don't know right term in english).

Cuz my math teacher once said to me, that only few people could truly understand and visualize the 4th dimension, but going up , like 5th, 6th and so on , can't be visualized anymore, it's too abstract and complex...

Don't know if all of this is true, but it seems kinda logical to me that time has nothing with visualizing, not even for animation.

Otherwise they would call 2d games, 3d , cuzz you have an extra dimension, time, apart from the 2 dimensions in graphics

[natecooper]

Originally posted by Gentle Fury
ok, all i wanna know is.................what is with this new obsession with the term 4D?????????????? The fourth dimension is TIME!!!!!!!!!!! I'm sorry but this has been a mis-usage that has bothered me for some time, and now it is EVERYWHERE!! I thought it was cute when 4D boxing came out.....but now for some reason every 3D glasses movie is being called 4D........does watching the movie open a time space continuum or something, does it allow you to gaze into the past and/or future???

sorry, totally off topic, but its getting really annoying.

It is possible to describe what a 4D object looks like.

A 4D object would have 4 axis, with each one being simultaneously perpendicular to the other three. This of course is impossible to illustrate and just as difficult to conceptualize.

A common depiction of a 4D object is referred to as a 'hypercube'.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Hypercube.html

[Marc Andreoli]

Originally posted by Solesurvivor

Otherwise they would call 2d games, 3d , cuzz you have an extra dimension, time, apart from the 2 dimensions in graphics

LOL
don't tell the Game Boy Advanced marketing department, or things might get a bit confusing...;)

[Solesurvivor]

I can imagine their slogans, "the first portable gaming device ever to produce 4D graphics !!" ;)

[parallax]

humans can't comprehend 4D (or 5-99D for that matter), or instead, we're just bound by it.

either way, our language probably can't even describe it.

so i've heard..:surprised

[digital_rhino]

My brain hurts:insane:

[wgreenlee1]

Originally posted by gmask


Most matter does change over time so it make sense to me?? But what the heck is the 5th dimension??



You know GMask...The Fifth Dimension........ (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/external-search/104-8475208-6496748?tag=gomus-2693-20&keyword=the+5th+dimension&mode=music)

[JA-forreal]

During the 60's and 70's alot of people thought that they had discovered what the the fifth dimension was.

[blakshep]

It's a little weird...a few months ago I saw the film Hypercube(which was a crap) but I started to search for videos and illustrations of 4 dimensional bodies. I was searching for long hours when I found this game. I thought it's really cool so I showed it to my friends and people at irc....and now I see this hype everywhere. Is it just an accident?

[Per-Anders]

4d fractals are nice... anyone remember kpt filters?

anyhow. the best description i've heard for why the 4th dimension is both space and time is to start simple with 2d space (because we can visualise this). now 2d space is a plane. So anything that intersects this plane would be there and solid to a 2d creature living in this plane. Now imagine that the plane is gradually moving along it's normal. Things owuld intersect the plane, and they might not be perpendicular to the plane. As far as a 2d organism is conserned those objects are moving and changeing becuse the point at which they intersect the plane changes, and their profile when intersected changes. Thus for the 2d creature you could say that the third dimension is change, and therefore change is arbitrarily called and measured as time so the third dimension therefore is time in 2d space, though correctly it's the vector that defines the velocity through the third dimension that is time, the third dimension itself is just spacial.

Now imagine that as three dimensional creatures we're moving through the fourth dimension slowly. The changes that we see around us are also time, we're seeing four dimensional objects intersected with our 3d space, So our velocity through the fourth dimension is time.

Of course the trouble with this is it does kinda predispose the ideas of fatalism, and i'm not entirely sure where quantum theory sits with this. :shrug:

[show]

errr ok.
sheeps right, gridlock took up way to much time itself. :P
this is just rediculous, the funny thing is that whenever i rotate the blocks in this thin around one of the axis i cant even see which way it rotated or anything :P

for now im h appy to blame this on bad lighting and tiredness hehe

[JamesMK]

This is much easier to visualize for mathematicians and alike... Dimensions are merely mathematical constructs. By applying simple formulae on 3D-objects you can, for instance, calculate how far apart two points are in three-dimensional space. If you feel like it, just add a fourth axis to the objects, and adjust the formula - and voila! You've got the 4-dimensional distance between the objects....

To visualise it non-mathematically however is more or less impossible..

(OK, you could say that a 3-dimensional object is the 'shadow' of a 4D-object, just as a normal 2D-shadow is the result of a 3D-object blocking the light from a lamp - but that doesn't help much, does it?)

[Marc Andreoli]

Originally posted by JamesMK

(OK, you could say that a 3-dimensional object is the 'shadow' of a 4D-object, just as a normal 2D-shadow is the result of a 3D-object blocking the light from a lamp - but that doesn't help much, does it?)

I think 'projection' is the technical, less poetic term ;)
same thing that is used whenever you display 3D objects on your monitor, you project a 3D object into 2D...3D only exists as an abstract description inside your computer.

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