Hypercube nets

These eight cubes represent the net of the four-dimensional hypercube (or tesseract). The configuration shown is only one of 261 possibilities.

The colors of the faces represent the way in which the cubes are glued to form the hypercube; moving the cursor over a face, two faces are highlighted: that one and the corresponding one which has to be glued to it. 

To explore the possible configurations, choose an edge where three cubes meet and where you see two squares of the same color facing each other. If you move the mouse over one of the two squares an arrow will appear showing how the two faces can be joined. If you click on the face, the cube next to it (and all the cubes attached) will roll around the common edge so that the two chosen faces touch each other, generating a new configuration.

Click & drag anywhere to change the point of view.

The mechanism is similar to the one that allows you to explore the Nets of a cube.

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