My pal Daniel Steinberg just sent me this very cool link about mathematicians who had never "seen" a physical model of a hyperbolic plane...never until some clever lady mathematician got out her crochet hook and made some :-). Geek women just rule!
As long as I've mentioned Daniel, I must say that he's a wonderful guy-knitter and a really fun pal with whom to go yarn shopping.
Actually, I took a hyperbolic geometry course from a math prof, many years ago, who asked us to make physical models of the space using paper. I made quite a large construction which seemed to be composed of lots of intersecting tunnels. Fun course too!
Posted by: Rafael | March 22, 2005 at 06:02 PM