Wednesday, January 11, 2006

The Lone Star Girl on Dimensions

The Lone Star Girl says that she and her math teacher are having a disagreement about dimensions. Her teacher says that a thread is one-dimensional. The Lone Star Girl says that a thread is three-dimensional; it is just very small. And really, isn't everything really three-dimensional, she posits? A square of paper, two-dimensional, according to her teacher, is not really flat, after all. Even the markings of a drawing on that paper are not really flat. What if you were a germ? They would sure seem three-dimensional then. And what if you were a giant? A really big one? A pencil might seem one-dimensional. But it would not be. And what is all this about what things look like anyway? How do we really know that things look like anything? Maybe we do not see anything but hallucinations. Maybe we are hallucinations of some child-creature we could never imagine....

That's my ten-year-old.

8 comments:

Triana said...

Bravo to her! And indeed, I've always had the same thoughts. Tell her to just tell her teacher it's all relative. So "relatively" yes, a piece of paper is essentially 2D in our world. But then I also maintain that we don't actually see objects, we can only see light. I'm not looking at a desk, I'm looking at the light. And do we all see the same colors?

Brilliant!

Saints and Spinners said...

Boy, wait until LSG discovers early William Sleator (if she hasn't already). What I like about (early) William Sleator is the tackling of really hard concepts like dimensions, quantum, etc., in a Twilight Zone-esque setting for young protagonists.

Lone Star Ma said...

Okay, who's that? Sounds like we need him.

Saints and Spinners said...

My favorite book by William Sleator is Interstellar Pig. There is a recent sequel out called Parasite Pig, which is also good, but not as good as IP. The book that deals with quantum is called The Last Universe, and it's kind of depressing. The book The Boy Who Reversed Himself is a noble attempt to travel to different dimensions and experience what it's like. And then there's Singularity, which is a poignant tale of sibling rivalry and black holes.

Some of his books I found pointless, i.e. scary-weird for the sake of scary-weird (i.e. The Boxes) or silly without much sense of proper resolution. Fortunately, Sleator does have a sense of responsibility, and does not condone cruelty, even if it's a means to an end. The House of Stairs is quite good, but I'd recommend the LSG wait to read it until she's a bit older, or whenever you think it would be apt for her (it deals with mind-control, what people will do for survival, and what it takes to refuse to be cruel even if it means your own demise).

At the time, the book Into the Dream made an impression on me, though now I can't find a copy in my nearby library system. Time to ILL...

Babararacucudada said...

Don't know if this is available in the US but you might just want to check out the book Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott.

It's very old but still in print in the UK.

Saints and Spinners said...

I just requested a copy of Flatland from my library. It looks as if there have been several (relatively) recent reprints.

klk said...

You have one smart daughter! I would by no means ever call a thread one dimensional! As an artist, one who creates with thread, it brings such life into things and I peer at it daily, the beauty of the many colored three-dimensional threads before me! At the least I would consider it two-dimensional, as would my dh if there were middle ground to agree on...what a smart lone star girl you have!

Lone Star Ma said...

Thanks for the recommendations! She has a bunch of birthday and Christmas books to read right now, but when she is looking for more reading material (soon), I will look those up!