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2.13.07
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Brain Exercises
1. A mobius strip has only one side. It’s in my three-dimensional world, it’s here, existing right in front of me and I can look at it and touch it, but there is only one side to it. It has an X dimension (about an inch) and an infinite Y. Is there anything else in three dimensions that is basically two dimensional? 2. “No candle in the wind, Anna Nicole Smith was more like a bonfire in a hailstorm.” –Cintra Wilson 3. Is there enough dead skin dust in your house to create a whole new person? 4. If you were a donkey you would be able to see all four of your legs at once, always. 5. Back on dimensions: I used to have this conversation with a girl in high school about higher dimensional objects passing through lower dimensions. Say you wanted to pass a two-dimensional object (a full circle, with just a length and width) through a one-dimensional space. One dimension is just length; so, a line. Passing a circle through a single-line space… when the circle touched the edge of the single dimension, the point of contact would appear in the first dimension as just a dot. Then as the circle got in deeper and the length of it was made known, the dot in the first dimension would turn into a line that expanded as the length of the part of the 2D circle passing through the 1D space increased. Then as the circle passed completely through, the line would get smaller again and eventually turn back into a dot (the point of exit) and disappear. 2D circle through a 1D space = dot, expanding then decreasing line, dot, empty. Now say you wanted to pass a 3D circle (a sphere) through a 2D space. A sphere has the length and width that a 2D circle does, only it also has a depth. When the sphere touched the 2D plane, the point of contact would again be a dot, then instead of an increasing and decreasing line (like the circle through the 1D line), the 3D sphere would show up in the 2D plane as an increasing then decreasing circle, again leaving as a dot. Because the only way to represent a 3D object in 2D is depthless slice by depthless slice. 3D sphere through a 2D space = dot, expanding then decreasing circle, dot, empty. So, logically, what would happen if a fourth-dimensional equivalent of a circle were to pass through our 3D world? It would probably appear to us first as a dot, then as a tiny but increasing sphere, right? And it would get big and then smaller as the 4D circle passed through completely, and it would leave as a dot. Are there any spheres in our 3D world that start off as a dot and then get bigger and smaller and disappear? Anything we know of that can be described as: dot, increasing then decreasing sphere, dot, empty? Q: What is great and white and only has one side? A: Mobius Dick.
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