it is a part of maths
but arithmetic is a very small part of maths. In general, rather weirdly, people that are good at arithmetic aren't necessarily good at the rest of maths, because maths hits a kind of "break-point" where it becomes impossible to visualise what you are dealing with. And those that are good at arithmetic are often in deep trouble then.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 11:23, 1 reply, 14 years ago)

The whole idea of multiple dimensions, beyond our three, really confuses me.

(Bazongaloid, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 11:25, Reply)

i like it tho, i was watching somethin where they splained the faster than light travel thing
and the guy was like, it could have been other dimensions, but i doubt it
(Quintno EXPERIMENT RUINED CANCELLED, LEFT 4EVER, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 11:33, Reply)

Oddly, I've had this conversation with Mrs B on several occasions.
The only way around it is to try and forget about our "arbitrary" dimensions as we understand them and realise that maths uses dimensions solely as the descriptions of the properties of an object, and that "location" and "size" just happen to be the ones that we understand and can see. So, i dunno, if I wanted to describe the properties of a small ball I could give its distance from a fixed point as 3 co-ordinates, its colour represented on a numerical scale as a fourth, and if the ball was moving, how long it had been moving for to be in that current "snapshot" position as a fifth. It's not a great explanation at all, because it's still trying to relate back to what humans can visualise. But it's better than the actual answer, which is "there are as many dimensions as you like. there just are. deal with it"
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 11:34, Reply)

Oh okay
that actually makes more sense, so dimensions are just separate ways of providing information about something in relation to something else?
(Bazongaloid, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 11:37, Reply)

effectively, yep.
it's a method of describing the properties of something, at least in maths. I'm not so sure about multideminsional physics, but I assume it's the same.

the tricky thing is that in reality, none of the properties that these dimensions describe have anything to do with something we can visualise, they are just "properties" .. but it works to think of them like colour, etc.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 11:42, Reply)

In code, that makes sense easily. It's basicly a class filled with objects and functions.
class ball {
var colour { get; set; }
var xCoOrd { get; set;}
var yCoOrd {get; set;}
var zCoOrd { get; set; }
var width {get; set; }
var height {get; set; }
var depth {get; set;}

function ball($params) {
$this-> = $params['colour'];
$this-> = $params['xCoOrd'];
$this-> = $params['yCoOrd'];
$this-> = $params['zCoOrd'];
$this-> = $params['width'];
$this-> = $params['height'];
$this-> = $params['depth'];

}
}
( G/PP 💩💩💩💩💩&#128, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 11:44, Reply)

yep. basically.

( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 11:46, Reply)

That's quite easy, really.
I reckon I'm quite clever sometimes.
( G/PP 💩💩💩💩💩&#128, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 11:54, Reply)