Gateway to the Fourth Dimension

No, it's not another Stargate, but Richard Jin postulates on the manner of depicting the elusive Fourth Dimension in a thought-provoking article, and his ideas relate directly to our world of 3D printing. Regarding our inability to successfully visually the fourth dimension, he says:

I would contest to say that much of the failure during this century was due to our belief that we could portray the fourth dimension on a two dimensional canvas. I believe that just as it is necessary to have two dimensions for a three dimensional projection, it is necessary to have three dimensions for a four dimensional projection.

We think he's on to something here, and perhaps modelers might take up the challenge of using 3D tech to produce models of 4D structures, such as Hypercubes. We are certain the vast majority of people are baffled by common 2D representations of such complex objects - but what if they were printed in 3D form?

Via Design.UCLA