tesseract

Jul. 12th, 2012 07:16 am
prettygoodword: text: words are sexy (Default)
[personal profile] prettygoodword
tesseract (TES-uh-rakt) - n., the four-dimensional analogue of a cube, a hypercube.


A regular four-dimensional solid comprising 8 cubes set 3 to an edge, having 16 vertices, 32 edges, 24 squares. One of the six regular convex polychoron (the four-dimensional analogue of a polyhedron and a polygon). The word was coined in 1888 by Charles Howard Hinton in his book A New Era of Thought, a collection of essays on the fourth dimension, from Greek roots tessera, neuter plural of tesseres, four + aktīs, ray of light, presumably thinking of this projection of the shape -- though of course, there are even ways to project a tesseract into two dimensions than to project a cube into them: Wikipedia has several.

---L.

Date: 2012-07-12 03:47 pm (UTC)
ext_27060: Sumer is icomen in; llude sing cucu! (Tutu: the gears of the story)
From: [identity profile] rymenhild.livejournal.com
tesseract, n. There is such a thing as a ---, Madeleine L'Engle, 1962.

Date: 2012-07-13 02:05 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] prettygoodword.livejournal.com
I almost mentioned Wrinkle ...

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