this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2026
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[–] BigBenis@lemmy.world 17 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Isn't "3rd dimensional plane" an oxymoron?

[–] AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 18 hours ago

I mean typically people refer to planes as hyperplanes once you go past 3D, but I’ve definitely heard them just called “planes” too

Hyperplanes are just a generalization of planes to higher dimensions. Often you hear the term when working with vectors because, like in 3D, you can define an n-dimensional hyperplane by a surface normal vector and a point. All lines perpendicular (orthogonal) to that normal vector which pass through the point form the plane.

It’s a useful concept and since we already have a word for that kind of structure in 3D space we just use the same term for it in other dimensions

[–] traxex@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 19 hours ago

Hmmm. I don’t think so but I do think it is incorrectly used here. To me, the 3rd dimensional plane would just be the z axis. If you were talking about the entire 3D shape which they are here, I would just say 3rd dimension.