where can i purchase a tesseract? aka a hypercube?

Question

where can i purchase a tesseract? aka hypercube.....does anybody know where?

yes i know, you cant point to the 4th dimension shmart ***..... but you can buy hyper dimensional cubes made of plastic and/or cyrstal....i am looking for one.......it was not a philosophical question.....;)

Answer 1

Tesseract is a 4 dimensional object. We live in a (macroscopically at least) 3 dimensional universe. So the answer is: nowhere in this universe.

Answer 2

you may come close to what is a mathemetician's 'mythical object' in one of a few ways.
1) do the math. Ugly. Unsatisfying, except - you can see it in your mind's eye ( so sorry math mavens, that's sort of like realizing a Tchirnhausen curve really does describe (technically) a circle with a right angle in it...) anyway, this might be a bit more work than you need.
2) do you have a pc that can run a fractal generation program? run two sets against themselves at polar opposites. Run again at planar opposites, confict will occur, your pc may lock up. Walk away. Look at the small intersect between sets, this is where the 4th dimension exists, although barely approximated. Go back to point 1, we can see it in our minds, we don't have a way to represent it. Sorry.
3) really cheezy method. Models do exist - but to have a 'real' one implies you are capable of (as I shall call it here) Folding Space. Look for some of the now popular toys based on Buckminster Fuller's studies, The xpandible and repositional ball has the quality of 4th dimensional space- but to us it is transitory - as you move the elements of the ball (or whatever it looks like at the time) realize that the dynamic of the moving itself is as close as you will ever be to the fourth dimension a Tesseract implies. Hawking will understand, Einstein might not have.
4) on a last, and lighter note - learn to play a string game - Cat's Cradle' or whatever it may be called when it is taught to you. Valuable for spatial awareness, and the move from one to another configuration IS the essence of the 'forth dimension' as we may know it. Flux under Time. Flux WITHOUT time, the change is all that matters, not the start or the end.
(added moments later - have a Tardis I can hitch a ride in?)

Answer 3

You are incorrect about being able to purchase an actual real tesseract.

They are a theoretical construct of higher-dimensional mathematics. Tesseracts are not an object you can simply purchase someplace or construct yourself and examine. It cannot be done.

You can mathematically define their properties but not physically examine or observe them in any context except equations and diagrams.

Although a 2D diagram or animation can be created, to display a realistic image of a 4D hypercube moving through 3D space, it would require a 3D holographic image - but that still is the same as a diagram, only animated in 3D.

It is relatively easy to construct diagrams of things that are physically impossible to construct or simply do not, cannot, or never have existed at all.

Answer 4

Check out

http://www.geocities.com/hjsmithh/WireFrame4/tesseract.html

for a really cute Java applet that shows a 2-D projextion of a tesseract and lets you 'rotate' it with the mouse.

The best you can get in a macroscopically 3-D world (such as ours) is a 3-D projection of a 4-D object (like a 2-D projection of a 3-D object onto a sheet of paper.

If you 'look' along the primary diagonal axis from (0,0,0,0) to (1,1,1,1) of a 'unit hypercube' what you'll 'see' is a projection of what looks like a 'cube within a cube' and edges going from the 8 vertices of the 'inside cube' to the corresponding vertices of the 'outer cube'.

I've seen models of this (at Cal Tech, UC Berkely, and UC Riverside) but they were all built by students using either thin wooden dowels or soda straws for the edges.

Check out

http://www.mindspark.biz/zome_explore.shtml

for a kit to build a tesseract (it looks pretty kewl.... I just might get one myself )

Doug

Answer 5

I realize you are looking for a model and I'm sorry to say I don't know. But the question reminded me a of a joke we passed around in our post graduate physics class.

Ad-Hoc's Quantum Shoppe sells massless strings and pulleys, frictionless surfaces and resistanceless air, and unbreakable strings for use in problems in textbooks.

:o)

Answer 6

Well, I know that you can purchase one in that resides in the confines of the Madeline L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time.