3D shadows: casting light on the fourth dimension

Series
Frontiers of Science
Time
Thursday, October 27, 2016 - 7:30pm for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Student Success Center, Clary Theatre
Speaker
Henry Segerman – Oklahoma State University – segerman@math.okstate.eduhttp://www.segerman.org/
Organizer
Stavros Garoufalidis
Our brains have evolved in a three-dimensional environment, and so we are very good at visualising two- and three-dimensional objects. But what about four-dimensional objects? The best we can really do is to look at threedimensional "shadows". Just as a shadow of a three-dimensional object squishes it into the two-dimensional plane, we can squish a four-dimensional shape into three-dimensional space, where we can then makea sculpture of it. If the four-dimensional object isn't too complicated and we choose a good way to squish it, then we can get a very good sense of what it is like. We will explore the sphere in four-dimensional space, thefour-dimensional polytopes (which are the four-dimensional versions of the three-dimensional polyhedra), and various 3D printed sculptures, puzzles, and virtual reality experiences that have come from thinking about thesethings.