Before delving into a reflection of my project, it is important to note down my personal tendencies regarding long-term projects. That being said, I am a perpetually procrastinating perfectionist. The combination of these problematic traits usually results in a turbulent journey from start to finish – a carefree and relaxing first few weeks followed by several stressful and anxiety-ridden all-nighters before the final due date.
I would like to point out another trait I possess: curiosity for anything extraordinary. It is this trait which resulted in me changing my research question 5 different times, the last being last Thursday – one day before the project deadline. I started a month ago wanting to learn about the effect of sound on our mental health, which morphed into my desire to learn about our need to believe, which then spiraled into questioning the human existence starting with the Big Bang, and then the possibility of manipulating electromagnetic waves to render objects invisible, which finally settled into the fourth dimension.
So why do I want to learn about the fourth dimension? A few weeks ago, one of my beloved family members passed away. I was inconsolable. Yet, I gradually began to realize that perhaps death does not signify the end. Yes, we may decease in a physical sense, yet I believe that whilst our matters are returned to the world, death is actually a liberation of our spirits. That thought intrigued me, leading me to my ultimate research question – How would 4-dimensional objects be perceived in our 3-dimensional world, and how would understanding it revolutionize our beliefs?
The fourth dimension is perhaps best described as a mathematical extension of the concept of 3-dimensional space. the 4th dimension is a concept that we can only picture in our minds. Similar to how a cube cannot be perceived in a 2-dimensional world, 4-dimensional objects cannot be seen in our 3-dimensional world. A common misconception I encountered was time as the fourth dimension. Whilst most believe that time is the fourth dimension, it is a temporal measurement and therefore not a spatial dimension.
The closest proof known to us suggestive of a 4th dimension would be the tesseract – a shape comprising 8 cubical cells. Similar to how a cube is composed of six 2 dimensional squares, a tesseract is composed of eight 3 dimensional cubical cells. It is the 4 dimensional analog of the cube.
Many physicists believe that the higher dimensions may hold the key to the unification of the four fundamental forces – gravity, electromagnetism strong, and weak forces. these fundamental forces would be viewed as vibrations in the higher dimensions using the field theory. This would drastically enable us to evolve at an unprecedented pace.
Due to my aforementioned tendencies, this project has been littered with hurdles. One of which was the time constraints that seemed to have morphed into a monster especially these past few days. Another major hurdle I had to bypass was the fact that the mysteries of the 4th dimension have not been unfurled as of today. I bypassed this hurdle by delving back a dimension, into a 2-dimensional world, a concept we are familiar with. I read Edwin Abbott’s novel, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. It helped me grasp the concept of perceiving the 3-dimensional world through a 2-dimensional being, an analogy which I harnessed to deepen my understanding of the 4-dimensional world through life in the 3-dimensional world.
In hindsight, I could have improved my project drastically by settling on one topic earlier on. This is the major problem I wish to resolve by eleventh grade, to focus on my chosen topic without being distracted and led astray by other interesting topics I encounter on the way.
The only solid and irrevocable conclusion drawn from my research is the fact that learning about the 4th spatial dimension is a ceaseless project. The more I’ve researched about the fourth dimension, the more I was made aware of our limitations and lack of knowledge. I would thus withhold my submission for CREST for next year, in hopes of gaining a deeper understanding of the fourth dimension and a deeper appreciation of our universe.
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