The Klein Bottle and the 4th dimension [4D Toys v 1.7]

One of the shapes people requested the most for 4D Toys is the Klein Bottle, so I finally added it!

I originally wasn’t very keen on adding the Klein Bottle for a strange reason: because it’s a 2D shape when sliced it would give thin 1D lines, which are obviously too thin to be interesting to look at. But people kept requesting it, and after thinking about it I figured I could give thickness to the lines by sweeping a circle across the 2D surface to get a 3D surface. This would look way better than simply extruding the Klein Bottle in 4D.

I also wanted to use this update as an opportunity to make a great video about Klein Bottles because the current ones on YouTube are in my opinion unnecessarily confusing. For example I don’t think it’s good to start with how the Klein bottle is two Möbius strips glued together. And I knew I could make better illustrations of the constructions.

Also, and importantly, none of the previous Klein bottle videos on YouTube properly explain the 4D part of it (the fact that a Klein Bottle has to self-intersect in 3D, but not in 4D). I was uniquely suited to fix that, ahah.

 

 

In the end, I am very proud of the illustrations I came up with. For example: showing the exact same perspective / construction for the Möbius Strip and the Klein Bottle really makes it clear what is going on! And as a bonus you get how the Klein Bottle is made out of two Möbius strips in an incredibly straightforward way…

It was obvious to me that the same construction could be done in higher dimensions to make what I call a “Spherinder Klein Bottle” which is a 3D version of the 2D Klein Bottle. Well, technically the “thickened” 2D Klein bottle in 4D Toys is also three-dimensional, but in a less interesting way since it’s just the Cartesian product of the 2D Klein Bottle with a 1D circle… Anyway, interestingly it looks almost simpler when sliced than the 2D Klein bottle.

Relatedly, because people have asked me before: yes there is a Klein bottle in Miegakure, and it shows up in a yet another unexpected way.

As always, thank you for your patience and enthusiasm!

By the way, I’ve decided to more seriously update the Patreon I originally made for my quaternion article/video. In many ways Miegakure is more than a game: It is revolutionizing how people explore scientific concepts with games, its YouTube channel is an educational tool in its own right with millions of views and many thousands of subscribers, scientific research developed for the game is published alongside it, etc… If you would like to support us, the Miegakure team would be very grateful. I will also post exclusive previews of what we are working on!

16 Responses to “The Klein Bottle and the 4th dimension [4D Toys v 1.7]”

  1. VcSaJen says:

    Neat!

  2. mike says:

    I love the look of the glass material
    Hope to see some of that in miegakure 🙂

  3. Fleechin says:

    With this, Miegakure and Hyperbolica on the horizon, I’m in for a ton of excitement

  4. Stefan says:

    Would be interesting to see dotted lines or something similar of a second 4D plane that shows an outline of the world with some offset.

    Nice tool!

  5. Mark says:

    This is very cool

    What I’d really love is a way to rotate the objects in four dimensions.

    • Spencer says:

      I agree, the rotation in 4D toys is pretty awkward. I much prefer the 4D virtual trackball implemented in The Fourth Dimension app (https://www.fourthdimensionapp.com/4dmanip/).

      I haven’t seen any first-person type rotation schemes (2D camera rotation + 4D camera translation). This might work for navigating 4D environments. I wonder if Marc tried implementing that before settling on the mostly axis-aligned scheme for Miegakure.

  6. Spencer says:

    It would be nice to see some of the other 4D immersions of klein bottles. For instance, the 4D Möbius tube avoids intersections and looks a lot more regular than the “bottle with a bump” parameterization.

  7. Darrell says:

    Excellent! But can’t talk Klein bottles without a shout out to (yes, that) Cliff Stoll!

    https://www.kleinbottle.com/

  8. Thomas says:

    Great work! One 4d shape I would like to see (not sure if you’ve done it yet) is the “squared circle”. The cartesian product of a circle with itself. Both disc with disc and circle outline with circle outline. The latter would be a 2d surface but you could do a similar thing as the Klein surface to thicken it.

  9. thomas guzman zumeta blumenschein says:

    puzzled here, truly. not sure what is exciting about a “4th” dimension. have you noticed that perhaps, upon positing the existence of infinity, it is a bankable certainty there are actually infinite different dimensions?

  10. Demond says:

    I am so happy and relieved to find this blog! I heard about this game way back in December and have been wondering about it ever since. I’m a big fan of this concept and will definitely be buying whenever it comes out. After scrolling through a bunch of your older updates, I can tell how much time and effort you all have put into the project. keep up the great work!

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