Plato's Shadow Problem

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This Demonstration is based on a problem proposed by Plato more than 2000 years ago in Book VII of the celebrated work, The Republic, in a dialogue called "Allegory of the Cave". Imagine a film running inside a black box with a thin slit. Outside the box there is a source of parallel rays of light—the sun, for example. Between the source and the slit there is a prismatic object that can rotate on its axis, which is orthogonal to the slit and the direction of the light.
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Contributed by: Antonio Candido Faleiros, Luiz Bevilacqua, Adilson J. V. Brandão, and Rodney C. Bassanezi (Universidade Federal do ABC - UFABC, Santo André, Brazil) (August 2009)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
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Details
References:
1. Plato, The Republic, Book VII, 514a–517c, circa 385 BCE. 2. L. Bevilacqua, A. J. V. Brandão, and C. Bassanezi, "A Mathematical Approach to the Plato's Problem," arXiv 0805.4596v1, May 2008.
Permanent Citation
"Plato's Shadow Problem"
http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/PlatosShadowProblem/
Wolfram Demonstrations Project
Published: August 10 2009