what is the fourth dimension?

You are correct, time can be regarded as a 4th dimension in the sense that in order to describe the accurate position of an object apart of its spatial coordinates you have to know its time coordinate. In the general theory of relativity what we understand as time has quite a different behavior than spatial coordinates, but i'm not giving the details here, but let's forget about time because that's not what you are interested in.

What if there were more spatial dimensions, 4 in total for example? well i can't tell you accurately what things would look like in such a space because we are not designed to live in that space, but we can grasp some of its simpler properties from our knowledge of 2 and 3 dimensions: Imagine that in the case of a 2 dimensional space a sphere was to travel through it, if you were a 2 dimensional being what you would see is of course not the whole sphere, but slices which would look as circles to you, as the sphere passes by the circle would be increasing in size then it would decrease until it disappears. In the case of a 4 dimensional sphere passing through our universe it would be a similar situation just that this time instead of a circle we would see a sphere that grows as a balloon and then it would decrease until it disappears. So you see we would be restricted to see 4 dimensional objects only to small amounts of their real appearance, there's still many things to say which are very interesting, but would take pages to write. Some physical theories even claim that there's more dimensions we are not aware of, being 11 in total, but they have yet to demonstrate it by experiments.

If you still want to imagine more about the 4th dimension etc. I would recommend you to read a book written by Edwin A. Abbott its called Flatland: a romance in many dimensions, it's very short and easy to read as well as instructive.

It's not easy to imagine 4-dimensional shapes (as the physicist Stephen Hawking wrote, "I have enough trouble visualizing 3-dimensional shapes!"). The best way that I've found is to think in terms of projections. A projection is a representation of an n-dimensional object in n-1 dimensions. For example, a perspective drawing of a building on a piece of paper is a 2-dimensional projection of a 3-dimensional object. With me?

The 2-d projection gives the illusion of 3-dimensions. In reality, the drawing is just a bunch of lines on a flat piece of paper. You can walk around a 3-dimensional object to see all of its sides (in the case of the building), but you can't walk around a 2-dimensional projection. So, a projection, by reducing one of the dimensions, in that sense, reduces how much of an object you are physically able to perceive.

A 3-d object like a cube can be projected into 2-dimensions from any angle. But no matter what, in a 2-d projection, no more than 3 faces of the cube are visible at any moment. In fact, our visual perception is 2-dimensional, at least in the sense that what we see is a 2-dimensional projection of a 3-dimensional world (we're not talking about stereo vision here). So, to see all the faces of a cube, you must rotate the cube, which takes time. No matter what, again, you can't see all of the faces at once, unless you flatten the cube into a net (like unfolding it into a flat sheet of paper).

Now, using analogy, imagine a 3-d projection of a 4-dimensional object. Let's say you have a 4-dimensional geometric object whose edges are all the same length and whose angles are all 90 degrees. What would a possible 3-d projection of it be? A cube! But just as a 3-d cube can be projected into 2-d from various angles, leading to many different 2-d representations of a cube, this 4-d shape, a so-called "hyper-cube", can be projected into 3-dimension from a variety of angles, leading to many different 3-d representations. Because the 3-d representation is just a projection, it can only show you part of the 4-d shape at any given moment. To see all of the 4-d shape, you have to "rotate" it, which again takes time.

However, I'm not saying that the 4th spatial dimension is time. I'm saying that the 4th spatial dimension is to the 3rd spatial dimension what the 3rd spatial dimension is to the 2nd spatial dimension (and in turn what the 2nd dimension is to the 1st). Does this make sense?

A dimension is only a functional coordinate that can be expressed as a variable in a mathematical system. In the 2-D plane (you might call it the xy plane or the xy axes in algebra class), you have two dimensions (variables)- the x direction and the y direction that can be expressed as the x and y coordinates.

That's quite a mouthful, so to put it in layman's terms, a dimension is just a number describing a quality of an object- that quality could be position in space, position in time, or something else.

In our world we have four readily observable things that change:

-position up and down (z)

-position left and right (y)

-position forward and back (x)

-time (t)

So when expressing every detail about something, we need those four parameters, or dimensions. For example, if I took a picture of a plant, you could get every detail about that event by knowing where it happened in xyz space and when it happened.

Some systems can have more than four dimensions. Think about dropping some red food coloring in water. In a system like that, you know that you have:

-position variables (x, y, and z)

-time (t)

But we need to know more than just what parts of the water are red and when they turn red. We want to know just HOW red they are at any given time! So we need another variable. Let's call it r for redness. Now in this system we have:

-position variables (x,y,z)

-time (t)

-redness (r)

So if we have an equation, we could figure out all of these coordinates given certain pieces of data for any particular time!

So, yes, if you feel like putting an order to the dimensions, you could call time the fourth dimension in our world- but dimensions are really just a mathematical way of describing what we see, not so much a hard and fast property of the physical world.

If you are referring to Einsteinian definition as in the theory of relativity, then the forth dimension is time.

If you are referring to spatial dimensions, then the fourth dimension is simply a direction or a vector that is orthogonal to all three of the orthogonal vectors that span the first three dimensions. It's a rather mind boggling concept to visualize a direction perpendicular to the three that you live in, but if you sit down and contemplate it for a while, you can start to imagine what it might look like. Personally, I can only imagine up to 4th. I can't imagine the 5th.

hello! of path I had to plead the fifth first(chuckles) whilst the moon is interior the seventh abode And Jupiter aligns with Mars Then peace will handbook the planets And love will steer the stars it is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius The Age of Aquarius solidarity and information Sympathy and have faith abounding not extra falsehoods or derisions Golden residing desires of visions Mystic crystal revelation And the ideas's authentic liberation yet i think of human beings do no longer understand that there is a 2 dimensional rift that obscures the different Dimensions! it fairly is inter dimensionality. thank you for the nice question! .

Time is the 4th dimension. A dimension is a property of something's existance that can be measured, it doesn't actually have to be a physical characteristic that can be seen.

Some people would then argue that weight would be a dimension. However you have to have gravity to have weight. Mass is defined by the first three dimensions, so thats out the door. Time can be measured and cannot be defined by any other dimension.

Wikipedia has a lengthy explanation about the 4th dimension. I won't copy and paste, but here's the link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_dimension

Time is often referred to as the fourth dimension. Imagine you are going to meet a friend. You know the city, the street, and the address where your friend will be. But how can you meet him if you don't know when he will be there? That physical location where you plan to meet is described in terms of place and time. Time is always a part of space, but we often ignore or forget that it is there.

Also consider that as you travel down the street to meet your friend you are also traveling through time. Don't believe me? Just look at your watch. Every movement of the second hand shows that you are traveling forward in the 4th dimension even as you travel in the other 3 dimensions to arrive at your destination. But the nature of time continues to be confusing. When did time begin? When will it end? Why does it seem to move in only one direction--forward?

Recommended reading: "A Briefer History of Time" by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow.

It is time.

It has to do with shape because you can have a change in the length, width, or height of an object over a given amount of time.

Good Luck!

well you could say the fourth dimension is the fabric of space-time wich can be bent, and has an effct on things(light)but actually time is becuase time can stop and slow down it and it has to do something becuase whithout it there would be nothing. time is also the fourth dimension becuase there are propably other dimensions of time in other universes the barrier between two dimensions also stop one dimension to see another.you also travelthrough time(one second per second) and becuase you can travel through it it can also be classified as a dimension

Four dimensional. Having four dimensions. Four dimensional is often taken as height, width, depth and time, but the actual names and meanings of the four dimensions depend on the application or context.