A hypercube is the n-dimensional generalization of a square and a cube, built by sweeping a lower-dimensional cube one unit along a new direction perpendicular to all the others: a point becomes a line segment, a line segment becomes a square, a square becomes a cube, and a cube becomes a four-dimensional hypercube called a tesseract. An n-dimensional hypercube has 2 to the n vertices and 2n facets of dimension n minus 1, and the longest diagonal across a unit hypercube of n dimensions has length equal to the square root of n. The shape is closed, compact and convex, made up of groups of parallel edges running in each of its dimensions, each group perpendicular to every other and all edges the same length.
Facts
Partially Attested
Origin YearMarks when the term tesseract, for the four-dimensional case, was coined; the general n-dimensional hypercube generalization is not dated to a single year in this source. Connections
In Branch
Source Wikipedia: Hypercube
Is Kind Of Object
Entity-backed identity for the object-kind enum value this mathematical object already carries, resolved to a mathematics concept by an explicit value-to-entity map (phase 3 bucket conversion, docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md). The object-kind fact itself stays on the object unchanged.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Hypercube
Lead section
In geometry, a hypercube is an n-dimensional analogue of a square (n = 2) and a cube (n = 3).
In Branch: Geometry, Lead sentence
In geometry, a hypercube is an n-dimensional analogue of a square (n = 2) and a cube (n = 3); the special case for n = 4 is known
View the Source2. Wikipedia: Tesseract
Etymology sectionQuote, Etymology section
The Oxford English Dictionary traces the word tesseract to Charles Howard Hinton's 1888 book A New Era of Thought.
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