MAM2000 (Essays/SciAm)

When the desired rotation matrix has been selected, it is assigned by HYPERCUBE, to a special matrix, rote. The assignment can be made conveniently by employing a double loop, the inner loop for the sequence of numbers across a row of the matrix and the outer loop for the sequence of rows.

The calculation of the coordinates of the rotated hypercube is done by "multiplying" the matrix cube by the selected rotation matrix rote. The product of the two matrixes is stored temporarily in a third matrix called temp, and it gives the coordinates of the rotated hypercube. That product is found according to the rules of matrix multiplication, a standard operation on matrixes of numbers. It results from an orderly orgy of multiplications embedded in three nested loops.

Temp, like vert and cube, is a 16-by-4 matrix of 64 numbers: it gives four coordinates for each of the 16 vertexes of the rotated hypercube. Each number temp(i,j) in the matrix is designated by a pair of indexes i and j. For example, temp(13,3) is the third coordinate of the 13th vertex of the rotated hypercube. Its value is the sum of four products of numbers drawn in a precisely defined way from the matrix cube and from the matrix rote. The innermost loop in the program can therefore be indexed by the letter k, which runs from I to 4, and that loop returns the value of one entry of temp.

The k loop is then placed inside the intermediate loop that has index j, The j loop computes all four coordinates of the ith vertex of the rotated hypercube according to the procedure I have just outlined; in other words, it fills in all four entries in the ith row of temp. Finally the j loop is placed inside the outermost loop, which has the index i. The i loop calculates all 16 rows of temp, and when it is completed, temp gives the coordinates of all the vertexes of the rotated hypercube, resplendent in its new position. In order to display it on the computer monitor one more double loop is needed that replaces the old position coordinates of the hypercube in cube with the newly calculated coordinates from temp.