Tesseracts
"Speaking of ways, pet, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract."
-A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle

Divider

So...What is a tesseract, anyway?
And why is this website named after one?


Yes, a tesseract is a real thing. (Hey, I was as surprised as you are. Or maybe you're not? ) But it is very interesting, anyway. As I understand it, the definition follows:

A Tesseract is a mathematical way of explaining the fourth dimension. The name comes from the Greek tessera, meaning "four". (Obviously, this being a two-dimensional webpage in a visually three-dimensional world, I can only draw a approximate representations of these objects. But such is life.)


.
Take a point; that's the first dimension. Now square it.
______
Once you've squared your point, you have a line, which is the second dimension.
Now square that.
Square
Once you square your line, you have a square. (Big surprise there.)
Cube
Now square your square, you have a cube.
What
Now square your cube. *Ta-Da!* You now have a tesseract. (Now, remember, I'm an artist, not a mathematician, so this is only my conception of what one looks like...)


Well, there you have it! That's a tesseract, as I understand it anyway, in a *very* simplified explanation. (And not quite accurate, since the above drawings are a two-dimensional representation of a four-dimensional object...) Check the search engines, and you will come up with a lot more, probably much more mathematically correct explanations. Or read Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time; that's where I first learned about tesseracts, and the reason for the name of my pages.

So, now that that's all cleared up, I know the question on your mind. You want to know why I'd name my site for one of these things.

The short answer: because I felt like it. :)

The long answer: As I mentioned briefly above, tesseracts figure heavily in the Wrinkle in Time series of books by Madeleine L'Engle, which I've loved since I was 10. I find tesseracts fascinating - just think of those different dimensions we don't quite understand yet. And (back to the subject!) these pages, though possibly not in the strictest sense, are multidimensional, covering a very wide range of topics - hopefully there's something for everyone! And if you use two 2-dimensional web browsers at the same time to see various parts of the site, well then. The site really *is* 4-dimensional..


Divider


since
August 15, 1997

This page last updated 11/14/03.
Counter by SiteMeter.