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As a casual Numberphile fan, I’ve browsed a few math videos and tried unsuccessfully to understand the weird convoluted system that is our spatial dimensions. Henry Segerman, a 3D math sculptor/printer, had been featured a few times on the main YouTube channel as a prominent educator on dimensional concepts due to his success in printing them. One of his comments (that a four dimensional structure would produce a three dimensional shadow) has always specifically stuck in my mind. One can’t really visualize that, I had thought naively.

However, a new video on the mathematicians’ YouTube community had brought my attention to his Zoetrope (built by Peter Reid) that depicted (to the best of his ability) a 4D cube. By shining lights in a particular way, indeed I was able to see that it was in fact, casting a 3D shadow. The object itself bends my mind, but its properties simply are beyond my comprehension. Such things really make it possible for humans to experience further than what we had originally thought we could. It felt like I was seeing a new color. There’s a beauty to fascination that I can identify within this sculptures’ intentions: not only a teaching object but a work of art by itself.

Zoetrope, Henry Segerman (giffed below)