I have been a math geek since I was four years old (Eisenhower, the last great, or even good, Republican president was still in his first term) and I became an amateur topologist and horologist not long after. This app not only makes an extremely obtuse and non intuitive topic accessible, it also manages to make it enjoyable and...dare I say it: FUN ! I have shared this app with my nephews and nieces AND their children (some as young as 5 years old) and it has always elicited excitement, curiosity and many, many questions. It will be interesting to see how their very early exposure to easily accessible and yet extremely abstract concepts affects their abilities to process and assimilate abstract and obtuse ideas going forward (or, in this instance, rotating outward and folding up...). I do, however, have one suggestion...although the two pages where you ‘hack’ the optic chiasma (meld two images into a “3-D” facsimile) work fine on my iPhone and my iPad Mini they don’t do well on standard sized iPads. My arms, and I’m 6’4” tall, are too short to hold the screen far enough away to fix and hold the images in place while manipulating the conjoined image. If you were to make an iPad-friendly version of those two pages, one in which they are just a little bit closer together, it would vastly improve the experience.
Now I understand why Dali painted the hypercube the way he did. I had a poster print of that painting on my wall 45 years ago, but wound up studying language instead of math. I’m still a math geek in my spare time, but for some reason I’d never gotten around to trying to manipulate a hypercube in 3 dimensions. I would say my education is complete, but it never will be, of course. But thanks for filling in this part—I’ll be seeing how many odd 3-D shadows I can make from this. And wondering about representing five dimensions in three. Since, after all, this 3-D tesseract is only really projected onto my 2-D iPad screen, so both the third and fourth dimensions are illusions of perspective.
I've been reading about the fourth dimension for decades, but never understood or pictured it as well as I do now thanks to this ingenious app. It really deserves to be better known and more widely appreciated. It makes brilliant use of both the iPad's ability to show animation and its multi-touch interface. I hope the developer will consider extending the app to cover other 4D shapes. He's also made himself the obvious person to create an interactive version of Abbot's classic, FLATLAND. In the meantime, get this app, and break through the walls of mere 3D perception. If this topic interests you at all, you won't regret it.
5 years ago, This nickname is already taken. Please choose another.
One of the Best Apps, Period
This review is long overdue but this app deserves all the praise in the world for explaining such tricky topics with so much art and clarity. As the saying goes, I’m not a numbers guy – I love science and math on principle but I’ve always been more qualitative – and this app rendered what for me have always been very tricky concepts in an easy to understand way. Plus the design is gorgeous and the atmospheric soundtrack give the subject matter the simplicity and mystical grandeur it deserves! Thank you for continually updating the app with each iteration of iOS. It’s a treasure - keep it alive!
Ok, I realize this will probably be the strangest review you’ve ever received. For years I’ve been filming objects that we don’t yet understand - those UAPs the Navy pilots filmed and other anomalies. I filmed an object that was changing shape in unpredictable ways, that is until I got this app! Now I have a much better understanding of how a 4th or other-dimensional object might behave at the boundary with our 3rd dimension world. This is the best explanation I’ve come across and is well worth the money!
This is one of the most interesting apps I have ever purchased. It guides you through everything to make it easier to understand, but the real value comes from being able to move the shapes around yourself. The graphics are excellent as well. This app is perfect for anyone who wants to gain a basic conceptualization of the 4th dimension.
I NEVER write reviews for apps. But this one is amazing. I was hesitant to spend the money on it but I am so glad I did. I truly feel like I have a better understanding of the fourth dimension because of this silly little app. The app writer is a genius. Thank you sir for this. Now we need one for the fifth dimension and beyond... 😀
I don’t even know what to say. If every class I ever took in school was like this... Wow. I love how you explained a 4d shape using a 3D shape, which everyone could understand. The only thing I’m confused about is... does the 4th dimension really exist, or is it just a theory? Despite all that, please make an app to explain pentachorons! (Which is basically this but with triangles). Gets 4 stars because it’s not quite worth $2.99... maybe 99 cents or $1.50.
I think it’s super cool, informative, interactive, a great idea put together well the list goes on. However, I do feel as tho it was just missing something. Another comparison or way of looking at the tesseract or something. Just fell short of 5 stars just because I feel like something is missing and I don’t believe it’s worth 2.99. Kinda pricey for the length of the “lesson”. Only worth 1.49 at most imo.
This app is awesome! It would be really cool if after doing the steps you could just play with a tesseract. It would also be cool if there were other four dimensional shapes you could play with until your brain hurts.
If you ever wanted to play with a tesseract, this is the app for you. It’s interesting to learn about the 4th dimension and it’s also fun. I like to stretch the resseract all out of shape in 4D mode then try to return it to its original shape when viewed again in 3D. It’s like playing with a Rubik’s cube in Salvador Dali land.
This app is amazing!! Somehow the devs managed to teach us the complexity of a 4D tesseract through amazing 2-dimensional illustrations and interactive segments. Not dumb stuff either, one of them makes you cross your eyes to 3D-ify your phone's screen. Way to think out of the box, QUITE LITERALLY!
Great app worth its money! Can get to next level by supporting VR (HMD view with head tracking and control from watch or other phone) view and/or AR. This will allow easier 3D reasoning. I have personally used Google Cardboard for stereo view and it worked fairly well.
I’m no math geek, but this basic tutorial gave me a 3D understanding of the 4th dimension. Nice interactive graphics allow you to get a perspective of not only 4D, but how a 4D item brought into a 3D world by shadows helped me to better visualize this difficult concept to wrap my puny brain around.
A line needs 3D to exist. Therefore the demos are useless in explaining what they are trying to explain as they always have to use a 3D line to make drawings. Wish someone would explain that……
Interactive! I’ve watched videos on tesseracts but to be able to move it yourself you are able to truly comprehend how it functions. The 3D element at the end brought me back to Magic Eye :)
Thanks for producing this app. I would like to see the remainder of the Platonic solids as shapes that we (the user) could interact with. I believe this would provide a complete experience. Thanks again.
I very rarely buy apps. I bought this one. I very rarely review apps, I am reviewing this one. In a word ‘mind-blowing’ and I am still not certain I understand it. However I did enjoy the hell out of it!
This app is excellent. It really teaches and explains clearly and visually so you understand. The developer of this app has a gift for teaching. From a spiritual perspective, you can see spiritual vs natural easily using this app. Great job!
One of the most amazing apps I have purchased on the App Store, Highly recommended. Would love to see more apps like this from this developer regarding the 4th Dimension and perhaps other scientific subjects.
I hope you can make a 5D app because I want to know all of the 5D shapes okay? Can you also add more 4D shapes to the app then only the tesseract? I always wanted to see more 4D shapes like the simplex/5cell. (5 faces)
As an app developer myself, I gotta say I'm pretty impressed. This is a well written app, and has pretty thoroughly explained a concept I've struggled to explain to friends for years.
This presentation opened up my mind to believe that there is another dimension beyond or 3 physical dimensions plus time dimension plus mass (energy) dimension— a spiritual dimension. Thanks for explaining the spiritual world to me.
Worth it but. I have suffered through quantum physics so not sure hot others might rate it. Seen stranger things. But for a 1 o2 year physics major ok. Missing flatland square but that is copy writed I guess. From Sagan’s original Cosmos’s
Got it for free but would've gladly paid for it. I basically LOVE IT!!! Amazing how the developers were able to simplify (to quite a great extent) such a complex subject i.e. the fourth dimension.
For those of us curious about space-time matters. Another way of looking at it is: just as 3D is an agregate of 2D planes, 4D is an agegate of 3D volumes. Looking fwd 4 more apps like this.
If you are sensitive to rapidly flashing lights do not watch the introduction. I’m surprised that a group of intelligent people built in a rapidly pulsing flashing light when it’s clear that’s a danger to people with types of epilepsy!
Wow! This app lights up the imagination and stimulates the intellect in a clear, concise, and delightful way. This has expanded my perspective on reality.
The Fourth Dimension is a 30-page interactive book that explains a single mathematical idea in language that anyone can understand. Instead of static images or canned videos, this app employs a unique 3D touch interface that lets you literally grasp the concept of the fourth dimension with your own hands. “Not only can you blow your own mind over and over again, you can also enjoy watching your friends’ minds being blown in front of you.” — Cult of Mac “One of the coolest apps I've ever used... The Fourth Dimension is to boring learning apps what Carl Sagan's Cosmos was to staid science documentaries.” — BuzzFeed “The app is very cool, and it's unlike pretty much anything we've seen in the App Store.” — The Verge “This is one of my most favorite iOS apps ever.” — George Musser, contributing editor for Scientific American and author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to String Theory (App Store user reviews follow.) “Blew my mind. I generally don't use 'learning' apps as they're mostly gimmicks. This one, though, truly made me think. I hope this developer comes out with more outstanding apps such as this one. Bravo!” — Iceitic “Astounding. That some people care passionately enough about tesseracts to go create a fantastic app for others to understand them is incredible. The app is extremely well designed, wittily written, and executed with love. That alone is worth buying it, besides the fact that I learned what the hell a tesseract was.” — Duncan MacMichael “Fantastic! This is what someone really smart, and who really knows how to teach well, can do with a tablet. And the authors are funny, too, which is a neat bonus.” — DNY “Fantastic app. I work at a leading UK university. If only all our material was this well written and presented. Definitely worth buying and then spending a bit of time with over a day or two to get your head around the fourth dimension. Great app!” — JulesFM “Great job! This app does the best job explaining the 4th dimension. Why learn it in some boring classroom when here you can have an interactive and visual explanation.” — Aco Strklalj Over 250,000 people have blown their minds with this app.
