2025-09-07

[public] 44.5K views, 4.42K likes, dislikes audio only

3Blue1Brown

Sol Lewitt's "Incomplete Open Cubes" and rediscovering Burnside's lemma in group theory

This is a guest video by Paul Dancstep: https://youtu.be/JEeM2ABUMoo

Instead of sponsored ad reads, these lessons are funded directly by viewers: https://3b1b.co/support

An equally valuable form of support is to share the videos.

Home page: https://www.3blue1brown.com

Thanks to the Wadsworth Atheneum for granting permission to use LeWitt's notebooks.

Talks by Paul you can find online:

What is Category Theory:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=eXBwU9ieLL0

How to Predict Eclipses:

https://www.exploratorium.edu/eclipse/video/how-predict-eclipses

Theo Jansen's Strandbeests

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxGTuQdp3IQ

Timestamps

0:00 - Incomplete open cubes

3:21 - Sol LeWitt

7:10 - Goofing around

13:12 - Size and symmetry

16:50 - Labelling things

22:34 - Lookalikes

28:02 - Probing for patterns

33:11 - Counting using lookalikes

35:50 - Epiphany

45:50 - Formalizing

49:51 - Reflection

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These animations are largely made using a custom Python library, manim. See the FAQ comments here:

https://3b1b.co/faq#manim

Music by Vincent Rubinetti.

https://vincerubinetti.bandcamp.com/album/the-music-of-3blue1brown

https://open.spotify.com/album/1dVyjwS8FBqXhRunaG5W5u

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