Geometry Is Beautiful

Header of Dimensions

Find nine 14-minute videos on geometry here. They’re breathtakingly beautiful!.

  • 1 Mapmaking: Stereographic projection of Earth
  • 9 Proving: the essence of mathematics
  • 2 M.C. Escher: Stereographic projection of the Platonic solids
  • 3 Four-dimensional polyhedra: Simplex, hypercube, 24-cell, 120-cell, 600-cell
  • 4 The three-sphere and 4D polyhedra viewed stereographically
  • 5 Complex numbers: Now a sphere is a “complex projective line”
  • 6 Transformations with complex numbers: Some Möbius (linear fractional) transformations, some fractals (quadratic)]
  • 7-8 Hopf fibration of three-sphere

Each video starts very simply and gets harder, but the computer graphics are so incredibly stunning that you will stay for the pictures even after you lose the narration. They are somewhat cumulative. Don’t jump into the middle. Number 9 can be watched at any time. The authors recommend last or second.

[Posted & edited by Dr. Gene Chase. Reviewed in American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 120, no. 3, March 2013, pp. 288-290.]