have u checked out www.superstringtheory.com ? i could go on and on about mulitple dimensions, but truth is i really don't understand well it enuf, nor could i explain it as simply.

Our friend the Italian Physicist and now fulltime Zio, Dr. MP has written a brief explanation of multiple dimensions for you.

conceptually multiple dimensions are relatively "easy" to understand via analogy. The idea of multiple dimensions is already present in our everyday lives just by looking at the difference between a line, square and then a cube. What can be said is that they are the same object but viewed in different dimensions (1,2 and 3-D). This seems obvious but the extension to higher dimensions is pretty daunting as we have enough trouble visualising in 3-D, however any extra dimensions are literally just more of the same spatial dimensions, with the same properties, that we observe.

So just as someone living in a two dimensional universe would have no clue as to what a cube is, the same can be said for us for the extra dimensions beyond our everyday 3 spatial dimensions. This doesn't mean that they don't exist; just that we are stuck on our 3 spatial dimension plane.

This is actually a fairly old concept first introduced in Edwin A. Abbot's 1880 novel "Flatland", which amazingly enough IS actually a novel and is easy to read.

So what has this got to do with physics? Well just because we don't interact with or observe these extra dimensions directly doesn't mean that nothing else does. Hence objects/particles can exist in these higher dimensions.

An interesting notion is that of the influence on gravity of any extra dimensions, which is what has been receiving some publicity recently. These extra dimensions are not flat but are "curled up" and are localised on the sub-milimeter level in our 4D space (3 spatial + time). Once you probe space at this level you can see the effects of the extra-dimensions. The most interesting possibility is that gravity is not confined to our 4D space (unlike all other standard particles/forces) but it can act in these higher dimensions. The consequence of this is that although gravity appears as a weak force (it actually is weak compared to the other forces e.g. that holding atoms together or those responsible for nuclear decay) it is, in reality, much stronger. We just see it as weak because it acts over a higher dimensional space which we can't directly observe.

The upshot of this - besides the "complete revolution" in the way of thinking about space and gravity - is that the unification of gravity with the other forces (i.e. the energy at which they all have the same strength) occurs at a lower energy scale and hence we would require fewer extensions to our current understanding of particles and their interactions to describe this. The real "bonus" of this theory is that it gives definite predictions and is testable at the energy scale of the current particle accelerators.

Hope this answers some of your questions....

Dr. MP

phl, your working on the Steven Holl competition I assume. If you read the breif there is a mention of Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe", you should check out some reviews of it for a summary of string theory. As far as the multiple dimensions go you will find that they cannot be defined or really described other then they simply exist so it's up to your imagination to run wild with it.

Speaking of string theory, this is an excellent overview from NOVA - The Elegant Universe - highly recommended if you have some free time and a high-speed connection.

I always felt that the Elegant Universe Series was a scientific infomercial with Brain Greene in place of Ron Popeil of Ronco frame. But its still cool to watch.

you also might want to hear these -

October 22, 2003 - Public Lecture Series
Roger Penrose, Oxford University: "Fashion, Faith and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe, Lecture 3: FANTASY"

October 20, 2003 - Public Lecture Series
Roger Penrose, Oxford University: "Fashion, Faith and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe, Lecture 2: FAITH"

October 17, 2003 - Public Lecture Series
Roger Penrose, Oxford University: "Fashion, Faith and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe, Lecture 1: FASHION"

from http://www.princeton.edu/WebMedia/lectures/

I dont know if you can stay awake through that, Penrose is pretty boring. Twistor theory is certainly interesting though

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~tweb/00006/index.shtml

has anyone seen the hypercube project?

an attempt to geometrically construct an object in a 4th dimension

i always hate when people say that time is the 4th dimension

does anyone feel the same way?

especially in schools of architecture, and also esp. when no one can back that statement up it is so rampantly used by students also i have noticed, and it makes me cringe and it hurts me physically....i get pins and needles

and this whole pedagogy built around the notion of time as the 4th dimension

was it really necessary to rediscover the use of time in order to utilize and justify the use of animation modules (keyframing and scripting) in design?

Aseid, Architects were not the one's to describe the 4th dimension as time. Pysicists have been calling time the 4th dimension for quite a long time.

0D : Blank canvas
1D : Point / Concept / Idea (ID as in Identity)
2D : ...

I was going to continue, but I think I may enter this competition as a precursor to grad school... get the juices flowing. Sorry.

jg, can you put a quote on this so I can enlighten myself..thanks

so physicists have been calling time the 4th dimension...yada yada

not really important,

anyway, as an architect i am concerned with the representation of those dimensions, so can we talk about that rather than who started time as the 4th dimension because the idea is that students are spewing this out into crits as if they discovered this amazing fact.

then they do a shitload of matrices and animation studies and show how this abstract construction looks at 5 sec, 15 sec, 2 hours, 2 days, 1 year, etc then laser cut some stuff and slap them together and voila architecture emerges

back to the drawing board

if time is the 4th dimension and it can be said as easy as that the word "time"

its just seems to be a cop out to me

i mean if the third dimension is depth and the second dimension is length and width and the 1st dimension is a point with no quantity

it just seems that something so abstract as time is a bit weird i mean the time of what

in relationship to an object what is the dimension time referring to

i am not saying the physicists are wrong or that i am in anyway an authority on dimensionality but i am seriously interested in this

before exploring multiple dimensions i just thought it would be interesting to first understand the implications of the geometric construction of a 4th dimension

using the hypercube, which i spoke of above it seems a little weird because it attempts to represent a higher dimension from the dimension under it

4d visualized through a 3d representation.

In my opinion, the hypercube (static) is a 2D drawing of a 3D object as a 4D slice (single frame) of a 5D concept.

The hypercube (animated) is a 2D movie of a 3D object as a 4D series of 4D slices (many frames) of a 5D concept.

4D being one single path of time for an object/objects. 3D being totally static.

5D being all possible paths of time (all possibilities).

I have to reserve my thoughts on 6D thru 10D until after the competition.

animated... of a 3D object as a series of 4D slices (many frames)...

sorry

I think everyone tries to pack too many dimensions into the 4th, when they should really be spread apart.

thanks jhon=) and other people that gave me responds =) i will go and check them out

aseid:
It's very handy to see time as a fourth dimension, or rather, to use time as an "extra" fourth dimension to be able to project a shape of four spatial dimensions onto a three-dimensional space. This is an example in the style of Abbot's "Flatland" mentioned above:

Imagine 2-D ants living on a 2-D sheet that exists in a 3-D space. The ants can only see along the surface of the sheet, so objects that are not intersecting the sheet remain invisible. But if you imagine an 3-D object traversing the sheet, the ants would see a smoothly changing 2-D section of the object. The third dimension of the object has been projected onto time, and since the ants hopefully have a memory, they can "see" (or remember) along this extra dimension.

Of course, time makes a strange extra dimension. In my example, time somehow exists as a common dimension for both the 2-D and the 3-D world, strangely "outside" both. Since the ants don't have a notion of a spatial third dimension, they might as well call time the third dimension. But we would call time the fourth dimension even if it's clear in the example that both we and the ants have the same notion of time. Maybe it's handier to use the expression of Einstein: space-time structure.

not an actual response to anything but
i think this site is very informative, imho

hope it is recieved as relevant to this discussion

http://mathworld.wolfram.com

forgot to add, specifically, the topology area which is most relevant