A Satire on Victorian Society
In 1884, Edwin Abbott wrote the classic Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions – a satire on Victorian society. It was largely ignored until the 1920’s when it was rediscovered in the wake of Einstein’s theory of relativity, as it was also a superb introduction to the geometry of space in more than three dimensions. The 2007 movie of the book conveyed the relative ease with which higher dimensions could be understood, if not visualised, and was watched by an attentive and well-behaved audience of the entire second year during the Wednesday afternoon double maths lesson of the last week of term. The pupils then participated enthusiastically in a Kahoot quiz based on the film; congratulations to Oscar for winning! Several runners up were awarded prizes following a recount after one ‘dodgy’ question was spotted. Congratulations also to the small number of pupils who correctly deduced that a hypercube with 1024 vertices must be called a Dekeract. The book is available for next to nothing from all good online book sellers and would be a great stocking filler for the keen young mind.
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