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The Hypercubical Dance - a solution to Abbott’s problem in Flatland ?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2016

P. K. Aravind
P. K. Aravind*
Affiliation:
Physics Department, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA 01609, USA, e-mail: [email protected]
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Extract

Abbott’s Flatland (1884) [1] is the story of the encounter between a two-dimensional creature, a Square, and a visitor from space, a Sphere. The Sphere tries to convince the Square of the reality of the third dimension, but with little success at first. Finally, after several long conversations and a few other worldly demonstrations, the Sphere succeeds in making the Square see the light (or the height?), with rather unfortunate consequences for the poor Square. Flatland became a big hit in the years and decades after it came out, and continues to enjoy a robust reputation today. Much of the fallout generated by Flatland in the more than hundred years since it was written is documented in the annotated version of the book brought out by Stewart [2].

Type
Articles
Information
The Mathematical Gazette , Volume 91 , Issue 521 , July 2007 , pp. 193 - 197
Copyright
Copyright © The Mathematical Association 2007

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References

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