Researchers have developed a polymer structure inspired by a classic “Chinese lantern” that can change into more than a dozen curved, three-dimensional shapes when it is compressed or twisted. These ...

Mathematicians have long wondered how “shapes of constant width” behave in higher dimensions. A surprisingly simple construction has given them an answer. In 1986, after the space shuttle Challenger ...

It can be tempting to assume that your intuitions about three-dimensional space carry over to higher-dimensional realms. After all, adding another dimension simply creates a new direction to move ...

When most people think of shapes, they imagine a triangle, a rectangle, or maybe even a fancier-sounding rhombus or trapezoid. But to mathematicians, shapes encompass a vast universe of surprising ...

A key question that remains in biology and biophysics is how three-dimensional tissue shapes emerge during animal development. Research teams have now found a mechanism by which tissues can be ...

Mathematicians are “reinventing the wheel” by giving it a new shape. Their newly imagined wheel looks like a many-dimensional guitar pick, and it could theoretically roll in ways beyond our ...