That means that electrons moving through graphene are effectively in a two-dimensional environment, a Flatland, and can’t use the third dimension to go around each other. The touted wonder material graphene is effectively two-dimensional, because in the third dimension it’s only one atom thick. But actually, while our world is three-dimensional, there are some things in it which effectively have only two dimensions, especially in the world of nanoscience. Life in Flatland may seem like an academic abstraction.

It’s worth a full read for that, though its examination of spatial dimensions is what’s kept it famous. There’s a lot of social commentary in Flatland as well, satire aimed at Victorian England that comments on gender divisions, class hierarchies, and dogmatism against new ideas. So if a person stopped directly in front of you, you’d have to pass to either side, or not at all. Of course, you wouldn’t be able to pass through things in Flatland, the same way you can’t in the real world. If a thing blocked your way, it would block it completely, and everything behind it would be completely invisible. There wouldn’t be any going over a fence, or peeking under a door. So we’d be moving in two dimensions rather than three, and we’d also perceive everything around us to have only two dimensions. The notion of up and down would be meaningless we’d only have left and right, and front and back. The idea behind Flatland is this: what would it be like if the world we inhabited were flat instead of 3D? You can imagine it as living within a piece of paper, or on the surface of a table. Which is absolutely worth reading, and a great example of what I love in science writing (or science fiction): an idea that makes you change your whole perspective on the world and reimagine it from a different point of view. What would life be like if you lived in two dimensions instead of three?īack when I posted about popular science books for non-scientists, one of the suggestions I got after the fact was Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, the 19th century classic by Edwin A.

Flatland dimensions