27.06.2013 Views

Hinton - The Fourth Dimension.pdf

Hinton - The Fourth Dimension.pdf

Hinton - The Fourth Dimension.pdf

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.

NOMENCLATURE AND ANALOGIES 147<br />

the object alters its shape as it passes through it, let us<br />

suppose this film to run up to the contour of the object<br />

in every part, maintaining its plane surface unbroken.<br />

<strong>The</strong>n we can push a cube or any object through the<br />

film and the plane being who slips about in the film will<br />

know the contour of the cube just and exactly where<br />

the film meets it.<br />

Fig. 90 represents a cube passing through a plane film.<br />

<strong>The</strong> plane being now comes into<br />

Null<br />

Red<br />

Null<br />

White<br />

Pink<br />

Yellow<br />

Orange<br />

White Yellow<br />

Fig. 90..<br />

contact with a very thin slice<br />

of the cube somewhere between<br />

the left and right hand faces.<br />

This very thin slice he thinks<br />

of as having no thickness, and<br />

consequently his idea of it is<br />

what we call a section. It is<br />

bounded by him by pink lines<br />

front and back, coming from<br />

the part of the pink face he is<br />

in contact with, and above and<br />

below, by light yellow lines. Its corners are not nullcoloured<br />

points, but white points, and its interior is<br />

ochre, the colour of the interior of the cube.<br />

If now we suppose the cube to be an inch in each<br />

dimension, and to pass across, from right to left, through<br />

the plane, then we should explain the appearances presented<br />

to the plain being by saying: First of all you<br />

have the face of a cube, this lasts only a moment; then<br />

you have a figure of the same shape but differently<br />

coloured. This, which appears not to move to you in any<br />

direction which you know of, is really moving transverse<br />

to your plane world. Its appearance is unaltered, but<br />

each moment it is something different—a section further<br />

on, in the white, the unknown dimension. Finally, at the<br />

end of the minute, a face comes in exactly like the face

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!