Escaping a Traffic Jam
Imagine that you are traveling on a four-lane highway. You enter a tunnel and get stuck behind a huge, slow truck. You would like to pass the truck, but you are not allowed to change lanes inside the tunnel. You are free to move only in one dimension, so you creep along behind the truck.
Now that you've reached the end of the tunnel, you can change lanes to pass the truck. You are now able to move in two dimensions.
A streetcar confined to rails can, in effect, travel in only one dimension.
Then you come to a traffic jam where all the lanes are full of cars and trucks inching along slowly because of highway construction. Travel is blocked in two dimensions, and you wish you could escape to a third dimension and fly up and over the traffic.
What if your car turned into a helicopter, and you could escape that traffic, but a huge storm came along so you couldn't move safely forward or backward, right or left, up or down? Wouldn't it be great to be able to travel in a fourth dimension, untouched by the storm?
NEXT: From Point to Hypercube
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